Innoson Group has countered claims by the the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) against Mmesoma Ejikeme, the 16-year-old Anambra female student accused of inflating her result and announcing herself as the top scorer for the 2023 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination.
Mmesoma, a student of Anglican Girls Secondary School, Nnewi, Anambra State, had announced that she scored 362 in this year’s UTME, declaring herself as the overall best candidate in the exam.
In celebrating the feat, Innocent Chukwuma, chairman of Innoson Vehicles Manufacturing Company, recently presented a N3 million scholarship to the applicant for her ‘exploit’. The Anambra State government was also planning to honour her for allegedly emerging as the top scorer.
The board, in a statement released on Sunday evening, noted that Ejikeme manually inflated her UTME result from 249 to 362 and used her inflated score to attract a N3m scholarship from Innoson Motors, and was set to be awarded by the Anambra State Government before she was exposed.
Fabian said the student manipulated her result to deceive the public to fraudulently obtain scholarship and other recognitions.
“The most pathetic of them all is the case of Miss Ejikeme Joy Mmesoma, who claimed to have scored 362 in the 2023 UTME and was awarded a N3m scholarship by Chief (Dr.) Innocent Chukwuma. She was even set to be honoured by the Anambra State Government when one of its top officials put a call through to JAMB to confirm her claim only for the Board to reveal that Miss Ejikeme Joy Mmesoma had actually scored 249 and not 362 she claimed. She had manipulated her UTME result to deceive the public to fraudulently obtain a scholarship and other recognitions,” a statement by JAMB said.
Ejikeme will be prosecuted and have her original result withdrawn by the board, JAMB said.
But reacting to the development on Sunday evening, the Head of Corporate Communications, Innoson Group, Cornel Osigwe, called for an investigation into the allegations of certificate forgery against Ejikeme stressing that the pupil couldn’t have engaged in such ‘fraud’.
Osigwe in a post via his official Twitter handle, @cornelosigwe said, “The girl I met doesn’t have the brain and capacity to manipulate her result. There is more to this story. A proper investigation needs to be done. Abeg let the poor breath.
“That girl was one of the most brilliant in her school, according to the Principal, her parents couldn’t even afford to pay for her WAEC and NECO Exams. Of what advantage will it offer her to manipulate her JAMB score? Let the poor breathe pls.”
