How dubious cyber cafes use apps to pitch candidates against JAMB

A 16-year-old Miss Ejikeme Joy Mmesoma, a candidate who sat for the 2023 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) and Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), has set the buzz across media platforms with the latter accusing the former of forging and parading a fake result. Although Mmesoma said she printed her result from the JAMB […]

A 16-year-old Miss Ejikeme Joy Mmesoma, a candidate who sat for the 2023 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) and Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), has set the buzz across media platforms with the latter accusing the former of forging and parading a fake result.

Although Mmesoma said she printed her result from the JAMB portal and was incapable of forging her result, the examination body said she sent a message to its platform requesting for her UTME result after which she manually inflated her scores and pasted the same on the 2022 UTME result sheet.

The JAMB spokesman, Dr. Fabian Benjamin said, “Unknown to her, the board had changed the design of the 2023 UTME result sheet. Her original result remains 249 as nothing can change that. With this her ignoble act, Miss Mmesoma would be prosecuted and her original result withdrawn.”

The board said its system was neither tampered with nor compromised as the candidate simply falsified a copy of a result slip of a candidate named “Asimiyu Mariam Omobolanle”, who sat for the UTME in 2021 and scored 138.

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He said, “The board is constrained to set the records straight and wishes to state unequivocally that many of the results which many of these candidates are parading are fake.”

He added that in many instances, some of the candidates had actually obtained far lower scores than they were claiming and had used some funny software packages to manipulate their results to deceive unsuspecting members of the public.

However, Mmesoma in a video that trended online said: “I am the owner of this result. I went to JAMB portal to print this result and this is what they gave me. This is the result here. This is my aggregate, 362. This is exactly how I downloaded it from that site. So, they (JAMB) now saying I forged my result is what I don’t know; and I’m traumatised that they accused me of forging my own result.”

She further said: “I am not capable of forging results. This is the evidence. The QR code on the result was scanned and it showed another name, a Yoruba name, Omotola Afolabi, 138. That same person that got 138, they checked again and the person scored 238; meaning that there is problem somewhere.”

She said the DSS have interrogated her.

“Instead of JAMB to wait for the investigation to be over, they posted that I forged result without confirming. I’m really sad about it,” she said.

In reaction, JAMB insisted that the result is patently fake and has withdrawn her 2023 UTME result and also barred her from sitting for the board’s examination for the next three years.

While this is generating a lot of heat among Nigerians, especially on social media, it should be noted that it is not the first time issues like this have cropped up.

Miss Mmesoma’s case actually caused an uproar following a N3 million scholarship award to her by Chief (Dr) Innocent Chukwuma of Innoson Motors and also when Anambra State Government wanted to honour her but decided to put a call through to JAMB to confirm her claim only for the Board to reveal that she had actually scored 249 and not 362 as she claimed.

Other scenarios

Alongside Mmesoma in the 2023 UTME, there is also a similar case of one Atung Gerald in Kaduna, who claimed to have scored 380.

Following his claim as top scorer, his ethnic group had taken the issue up requesting that he should be given special recognition only for the board to burst the claim, with the incontestable fact that Atung never obtain the 2023 UTME application documents not to talk of sitting for the examination.

Recall also the case of a 19-year-old candidate in the 2021 UTME, Chinedu John, who claimed to have scored 380 in the examination conducted in June but after enquiries, 265 kept appearing as his score as against the 380.

The candidate claimed that between 2019 and 2021, his UTME scores were altered by JAMB, which denied him to study medicine, which was his desired course.

The suspect’s father, John Ifenkpam, had approached a court demanding N2 billion as damages to cover the emotional and physical trauma for offering separate scores.

After forth and back, it was established that John actually scored 265, and not 380 as he claimed.

He eventually confessed his crime and tendered unreserved apology alongside his counsel in the face of an open investigation observed by several national public institutions including the Public Complaints Commission, National Human Rights Commission, Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Council, Servicom and media houses.

Meanwhile, 19-year-old Mmesoma is not alone in the attempt at JAMB result falsification as there are other 10 candidates who the board said it was planning to prosecute for forging their UTME results.

Though it has refused to release the list of all the candidates involved, it said it remains unperturbed by the unfortunate development as this is not the first time such fraudulent claims have been made.

Analysis of Mmesoma result

While JAMB has insisted that the result paraded by Mmesoma is fake, while she is claiming otherwise, it is important to look at the result in question.

Some of the obvious features of the result are that it is different from other 2023 results slip and there is no picture on it.

JAMB stopped issuing Notification of Result slips after the 2021 UTME for the simple reason that candidates were falsifying them. Consequently, it has been issuing actual UTME RESULT Slips since 2022 complete with the photograph of each candidate.

So what Mmesoma has is a Notification of Result slip.

Another feature is that her state of origin reads Enugu State and the slip had no choices of institutions as some other results seen by Daily Trust.

The result also shows the breakdown of the result as follows, Use of English 64, Biology 4, Chemistry 81 and Physics 89 totaling 362.

However, JAMB released her original result containing all the missing information above but with different scores as follows, Use of English 64, Biology 74, Chemistry 57 and Physics 54, totaling 246, and showed that she wants to study Pharmacy in the University of Lagos.

Meanwhile, a fact check tagged ‘How Mmesoma Ejikeme’s Fake JAMB UTME Result Came About’ carried out by Foundation for Investigative Journalism (FIJ) showed that the result could have been manipulated by an app called JambFun-Fake Jamb Result Maker’.

According to the report, the app enables users to create fake UTME results. “We downloaded this app and opened it to reveal a mock ‘JAMB 2022 UTME Results Notification’ slip. We observed that this slip matched the one paraded by Ejikeme. It is the same slip JAMB discontinued in 2021,” it said. 

Reacting, an education technologist, Irodia Lucky, told Daily Trust that the possibility of forging results using technology is not unlikely as it is in fact the easiest way of doing that.

He, however, noted that the case of Mmesoma is a completely different issue, saying the questions the board needs to answer include, “What prevents the results from being released immediately a candidate finishes the exam?  The mode of the examination is Computer Based Test which makes it possible for a candidate to see his/her result immediately the candidate finishes answering the questions and submits.”

He maintained that JAMB as an examination body needs to clear itself of the accusations of manipulating candidates’ results and prove itself to be a credible examination body.

 Oloyede’s stand on Mmesoma

The JAMB Registrar, Prof Is’haq Oloyede, who spoke to Voice of Nigeria in Windhoek, Namibia, said the board discovered the irregularities through its changed pattern and improved facilities in the conduct of exams and the features of its UTME results for 2023.

“The truth is that JAMB has concluded an investigation on Mmesoma’s score falsification matter. She was not the only one caught just that others have chosen not to go out,” Professor Oloyede stated.

He said: “Presently, there is an industry faking results and unfortunately they cannot penetrate the JAMB system, reasons being that the JAMB system is fully proven and we will prove it any time.  It is unfortunate that parents and some of the candidates that are being fooled are not aware that they have only been fooled.

“There is internal evidence to show that the change in Ejikeme’s scores was done with her collaboration. There are certain features pertaining to her that only she knows, unless she makes them available to somebody else they couldn’t have increased her scores on her behalf.”

Technology can be manipulated – Experts 

Speaking on the phone with Daily Trust, the CEO of Techy Train Incubator Foundation, Excellence Anurika Joshua, said it is quite possible for technology to be bypassed by superior technology. 

“I don’t have full details on the JAMB issue, but technology can be manipulated and bypassed depending on the level of security embedded in it,” the CEO of the Abuja-based technology firm said.

On how it can be manipulated, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Majadtek Nigeria, AbdulMuizz Oyewole said: “JAMB results or any other document whatsoever can be forged using different technologies, even if such documents emanate from the American intelligence agency. The era of artificial intelligence even makes it easier as there are tools with greater precision that make such forgery possible.”

He said the advancement in technology has even made it cheaper and easy to achieve.

“And that is one important thing about technology; it is a double-edged sword. You can use it for good or bad. I will use this medium to appeal to technology leaders to emphasize ethics in the use of technology in all their advocacies.” 

He said very popular software tools can be downloaded free from the internet and used to manipulate anything with ease.

“With my training in cyber security, it is not a big deal. Some of these popular business centres and cyber cafes will do it with ease using popular image or document editing tools. But the question is, are they able to accurately clone security features used by JAMB on the original result slips? If they do, then we can begin to assume a high-level and costly software has been used. But if otherwise, it is rather a cheap clone and does not render JAMB’s security strategies ineffective,” he said.

“Meanwhile, from a less technical perspective, the question that should have been asked is how does the girl, her parents, supporters and sympathizers know who had the highest score in JAMB without a pronouncement from the examination body?

“If she finds herself truly scoring as high as 362, how does she know there isn’t another candidate that has scored 363 which makes her no longer the highest-scoring candidate?” It is important we allow objectivity to guide our perspectives,” he said.

 

By Chidimma C. Okeke & Zakariyya Adaramola