The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) says the 19-year-old candidate, who sued the board over his exam score has been handed over to the police.
The board’s Registrar, Prof Ishaq Oloyede, while briefing journalists in Abuja on Friday, September 3, 2021, said the candidate, Chinedu John tampered with the result the board issued to him.
Oloyede said John claimed he scored 380 in the examination conducted in June but was surprised to receive 265 from the board after the results were released.
According to him, after ‘altering’ his UTME score, the candidate’s father, John Ifenkpam approached a lawyer in Enugu, Ikeazor Akaiwe, who wrote to JAMB demanding N1 billion as damages and also asked the board to conduct another exam for the boy.
The lawyer was said to have argued that the N1billion is meant to cover for the physical and emotional trauma the boy had been through from being offered “two separate scores.”
The candidate was said to have also claimed that JAMB denied him the opportunity to study medicine, his desired course because the exam body ‘altered’ his UTME scores in 2019, 2020 and 2021.
He said, “The result I have been receiving is not the result I am entitled to. I wrote the first JAMB in 2019.
“The first time, they sent 328 and later, I saw 278 when I checked it. I printed it. I couldn’t meet up for admission that year. I wanted to study medicine and surgery at the University of Ibadan.
“In 2020, the same thing happened. I scored 343, but by the time I went to the portal to print, I saw 306. I used the 306 and it gave me admission in UI. But because I didn’t have Further Mathematics, I had to forfeit it.
“I decided to leave Medicine and Surgery for them in 2021 so I picked Petroleum Engineering. In 2021, JAMB issued me two results. I saw 380 the first time I checked and then the second time, I saw 265.”
However, following an invitation from the management of the board, the candidate, his father and their lawyers visited JAMB’s headquarters in Abuja on Friday.
The boy was said to have been given few minutes in a closed session with his father and lawyers to confess about the result he was parading, but he insisted that the original score he received from the board was 380.
After going back and forth, the board tendered a documentary evidence which showed that John actually scored 265 and not the 380 he had claimed.
Oloyede accused John of tampering with his result, adding that he will be handed over to the police for investigation and subsequently prosecuted.
He also said the original result issued to him would be withdrawn pending investigation.
“There was never any communication of 380 with this boy. Because this boy has accused JAMB, we are going to withhold his result until the investigation is concluded. We are going to request that our interactions with him be subjected to the public,” Oloyede said.
Reacting, the candidate’s lawyer urged the board to give room for further investigation.
However, JAMB’s Public Relations Officer, Fabian Benjamin, claimed that the candidate confessed that he truly altered his UTME result.
Benjamin said, “The candidate who was paraded for forging the Board’s result has confessed after the Board discovered that he saved his sister’s number on his phone as 55019 and used the phone to send the fake result to his phone.
“When he sends such results, they come as 55019.
He said the boy claimed he committed the crime because ‘the result he got was not up to what could give him his desired programme.’