Charity they say, begins at home.
But the reverse is the case when our parents, who are not only in the position to instill discipline in us but also help us cultivate the spirit of obedience to civic rules and regulations clearly begin to violate the rules.

In recent times, the story of the disgusting and shameful infraction by a 16-year old girl, Ejikeme Mmesoma, who inflated her JAMB results from 249 to 362 has been flying in the media firmament amid diverse criticisms.
After reading diverse opinions and having a chat with some professionals about the trend, I would like to ask a few questions and also point out a few things.

On February 12th, 2018, Philomena Chieshe, a clerk with The Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) had told the world that a snake swallowed a sum of N36m generated from sales of scratch cards to students.
Till tomorrow, there is no concrete evidence as to what exactly happened to the money and who is being held responsible for a fraud that was committed in broad daylight.

In February 2023, we also witnessed the greatest manipulation of results ever recorded in the history of presidential election in Nigeria.
Such impunity goes on with the courage to gather evidences just to head for the court of law to claim right.

I listened to Mmesoma speak on this issue. According to her, she was invited to the DSS office to give a statement; and despite that an investigation was ongoing, JAMB decided to parade her as a fraudster.
If we were to ask Nigerian students to share their JAMB experiences, I am sure the Board wouldn’t be surprised that the current system they run is still fraught with a lot of inadequacies.

Often times, students have challenges with their computers tripping off in the middle of an exam. While I am not exonerating Mmesoma, I would like us to bear in mind that not only is Mmesoma a minor, but that result forgery is also a financially expensive venture to embark on. Would Mmesoma have been able to foot the bill to achieve her desired result? Or did she have a “sponsor?”

In its statement issued by its Head of Protocol and Public Affairs, Fabian Benjamin, JAMB had informed the public of the glaring disparity between Mmesoma’s result template and the template for the 2023 UTME results. JAMB also went further to state that the template of Mmesoma’s result was last used in 2021.
This controversy prompted me to speak with an IT professional who confirmed my fears that while Mmesoma might not have the resources to fake her results, someone else did in desperation to guarantee her a cheap pass.
The IT guru also enlightened me that the culprit who aided and abeitted the forgery wouldn’t have been able to achieve the goal without access to the embattle girl’s personal data details which include fingerprints and others.

Now that JAMB’s investigations have unravelled the forgery and Mmesoma have owned up, shouldn’t Nigeria be asking these crucial question: “Who paid for it?” “in which CBT center was it done?” “How many more people has the abeiter helped?” “How long has this been going on?” “Why did it take JAMB this long to discover the error?” And if she hadn’t gone public with her score, would this fraud have been detected? Many questions to answer.

Let’s digress a bit from JAMB and Mmesoma scenario for a minute and talk about the tribal colouration, (using as a reference point, people like Kemi Olunloyo who have decided to send their brains on sabbatical, but are desperately trying to make sense out of sentimental nonsense.
I would like to use this medium to ask Aunty Kemi how she is doing, and if her relationship with her children brings her fulfillment as I am beginning to see a pattern of pure hatred when it comes to Kemi Olunloyo and children.

Twitter’s @Shillypepper1