The Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof Ishaq Oloyede has handed over a 19-year-old candidate in the 2021-2022 Unified Tertiary and Matriculation Examination (UTME) to the police over blackmail and forgery of results.
Oloyede made this known while briefing journalists at the Board’s Headquarters in Abuja on Friday.
The candidate goes by the name Chinedu John, had earlier claimed that he scored 380 in the examination as against his original score of 265 received from the board after the results were released.
According to him, “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, Oloyede said “alteration” of the UTME score, the candidate’s father, John Ifenkpam, approached an Enugu-based lawyer, Ikeazor Akaiwe, who wrote to JAMB for another opportunity for the boy to retake the examination and demanded N1 billion as damages.
According to Oloyede, the lawyer said the N1 billion was to cover for the physical and emotional trauma the boy had been through from being offered “two separate scores.”
Oloyede accused the candidate of alteration, adding that he will be handed over to the police for investigation and subsequently prosecuted.
The registrar said John was among 11 other candidates who allegedly forged their results that the board would prosecute.
He said the original result issued to him would be withdrawn pending investigation.
Oloyede said, “We have 11 of them who tampered with their results. Two of them are already being prosecuted. The remaining ones we are going to withdraw their results and prosecute them. The main purpose is to sanitise the system, including our own staff.
“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.”
Also, the Public Relations Officer of the Board, Mr. Fabian Benjamin, claimed that the candidate confessed to the crime.
According to him, “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 pleaded for mercy that he had to do that when the result he got was not up to what could give him his desired programme.”