Osita Chidoka, Nigeria’s former Aviation Minister whose foundation owns the Computer Based Test (CBT) Centre where the embattled Ejikeme Mmesoma sat her Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), has spoken up on what he knows about the controversies surrounding the result obtained by the candidate.

Ms Mmesoma and the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) have engaged in accusations and counter-accusations over the authenticity of the candidate’s claim of scoring 362 in the 2023 UTME.

With the acclaimed 362 score, Ms Mmesoma said she was the highest scorer in the examination as against the 360 reportedly scored by another candidate, Umeh Ukechinyere.

JAMB said that based on its record, Ms Ukechinyere scored the highest mark in the 2023 UTME and not Ms Mmesoma.

In a video which has since gone viral on social media, Ms Mmesoma displayed a notification of a result slip containing the 362 score, which she claimed was generated from the JAMB portal. But the examination body has since disclaimed the document, saying it stopped using such format for result slips in 2021.

Meanwhile, JAMB has announced the withdrawal of the candidate’s 249 score, and suspended her from taking the examinations for the next three years.

But in what seems to be in defence of JAMB, Mr Chidoka has raised some questions that suggest that the candidate’s paraded score is fake.

Red flags

Mr Chidoka said he observed two red flags from the result presented by Ms Mmesoma. First, he said the centre’s name, as spelt on the slip the candidate presented, was last used in 2021.

He added that the result format was also last used in 2021, a position earlier maintained by the examination board.

“Since 2021, the JAMB portal stopped referring to our centre as Thomas Chidoka Center for Human Development,” he wrote in an opinion piece.

“The correct name on the JAMB portal and the Main Examination Slip is Nkemefuna Foundation (Thomas Chidoka Center for Human Development).”

He said JAMB had in 2021 insisted that the centre should change its name to reflect the name on its Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) registration. This, he said, was implemented in 2021.

“Due to the difference in our CAC registration details, JAMB insisted we change to Nkemefuna Foundation with Thomas Chidoka in a bracket as an identifier,” he said.

According to Mr Chidoka, all examination slips for the centre now bear ‘Nkemefuna Foundation’ with ‘Thomas Chidoka Centre’ in a bracket.

“But the result she (Ms Mmesoma) presented had just Thomas Chidoka Centre without the prefix, Nkemefuna Foundation. This error raised my suspicion about the genuineness of the presented result,” he added.

The second red flag, he said, was the same one that JAMB has repeatedly flagged in this controversy.

He said a look at the result slip showed that it was different as “those who took the last examination at our centre showed a different result slip template with the candidate’s passport picture, JAMB watermarks, and no mention of the name of the examination centre.”

He said he waited for the candidate to explain how she got the result, which he said was obviously not approved by JAMB.

He said: “I gave the young Mmesoma the benefit of the doubt and waited to see if she would explain how she got the result, which is obviously not the approved JAMB result template used in 2023. Without that explanation, I knew it was a fake result.”