After Mmesoma Saga, Nigerian Lady Releases Solutions to JAMB's Reputation, Shares Personal Experience

After Mmesoma Saga, Nigerian Lady Releases Solutions to JAMB's Reputation, Shares Personal Experience

  • Ejikeme Mmesoma, a girl who claimed to have scored 362 in UTME, was exposed by JAMB that she scored 249
  • Akhigbe Samson, a Facebook user, shared her own experience with JAMB and how she did research on how to get to PhD without JAMB
  • Samson suggested four solutions for JAMB to improve their reputation and service

Few days ago, a young girl named Ejikeme Joy Mmesoma claimed to have scored 362 out of 400 in the 2023 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) organised by JAMB.

Her claim was widely celebrated and praised by many Nigerians who saw her as a genius and a role model.

Lady recommends how JAMB can improve
Lady recommends that JAMB should always declare the highest scorer. Photo credit: UGC
Source: Twitter

4 solutions for effective reputation

However, JAMB later revealed that her actual score was 249, and that she had falsified her result slip.

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The revelation sparked outrage and disappointment among Nigerians who felt betrayed and deceived by Mmesoma.

Some also blamed JAMB for creating an environment where such fraud could thrive.

They cited their own personal experiences of suffering from JAMB's poor service delivery and lack of transparency.

Traumatic experience

One of such Nigerians is Akhigbe Samson, a Facebook user. She told Legit.ng that some people narrated having a traumatic experience with JAMB when she wrote the exam in 2015.

She said that the name of the candidate in front of her on the queue at Ikoyi exam center was erased and replaced with another name on the list.

She said, at the time, she was so frustrated by JAMB that she did a comprehensive research on how to get to PhD level without JAMB.

Read also

Mmesoma Ejikeme: 3 things Nigerian teenager said about how she manipulated her JAMB score

Samson told Legit.ng JAMB needs to do more to improve their reputation and regain the trust of Nigerians.

She suggested some solutions that JAMB should implement to achieve this goal.

First, she said JAMB should be more transparent in their operations.

In her words:

"Transparency in operations will help improve their reputation. The results were released within 2-3 days after the exams were concluded, which was impressive. I'm concerned why it took almost 2 months to declare the highest scorer. Since it was a computer based test, one would assume that determining the highest would have been immediate."

Second, she said that JAMB should address the network issues that affect students in centers that have poor access.

She told Legit.ng:

"Network issues continue to affect students in centers that have poor access. The system should be programmed in ways that allows students to use their alloted time regardless of network glitches. A student shouldn't be logged out automatically in the event of network outage."

Read also

Breaking: Ejikeme Joy Mmesoma confesses to manipulating JAMB result, reveals how she did it in quick steps

Third, she told Legit.ng that JAMB should stop reducing the cutoff points for admission.

She said that this was an indication of reduced academic standards and expectations. She said that students were no longer driven to score average or higher because the threshold was lower.

Fourth, she said that JAMB should improve their communication channels with the public.

She wrote:

"The channel of communicating with JAMB should be improved. In a technology driven 21st century, it is worrisome that communication with JAMB is almost impossible. There has to be improvements in communications and dispute resolutions. Their online communication channels are simply announcement boards and hardly attend to queries."

Ejikeme Joy Mmesoma confesses to manipulating JAMB result, reveals how she did it in quick steps

Meanwhile, Legit.ng earlier reported that Ejikeme Joy Mmesoma has confessed to manipulating her JAMB result.

In an Anambra panel findings, she admitted to the forgery.

A screenshot of the report shared by a Nigerian journalist, Deborah Tolu-Kolawole, on Twitter, JAMB revealed the teenager's different attempts to access its portal.

Source: Legit.ng

Authors:
Basit Jamiu avatar

Basit Jamiu (Editor) Basit Jamiu is a journalist with more than five years of experience. He is a current affairs and politics editor at Legit.ng. He holds a bachelor's degree from Ekiti State University (2018). Basit previously worked as a staff writer at Ikeja Bird (2022), Associate Editor at Prime Progress (2022), and Staff Writer at The Movee (2018). He is a 2024 Open Climate Fellow (West Africa), 2023 MTN Media Fellow, OCRP Fellow at ICIR, and Accountability Fellow at CJID. Email: basit.jamiu@corp.legit.ng.