Pegasus Reporters Issues on the Wing
“To my beautiful young and calm Ejikeme Joy Mmesoma, this is a form of discouragement, and it is clear that the Devil and the agents of darkness have seen your glory and they are ready to dent it with lies and defamation; and I will just advise her parents to keep her success low key, if they don’t want the girl’s mental wellbeing to be tampered with”
*Miss Ejikeme Joy Mmesoma
PEGASUS REPORTERS, LAGOS | JULY 05, 2023
The forces against the glory, future, and stardom are more than what we think they were; although it appears physical or common, it does have a long way in explaining why a country like Nigeria has plunged into the abyss of backwardness despite its vast natural, human, and mineral resources.
The Anambraian Ejikeme Joy Mmesoma has supposedly won a scholarship N3m scholarship from Innoson Motors, for scoring 362, while the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, raised an alarm about the young lady forging her scores; claiming she actually in fact scored 249 at the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME.
Now, first off, 249 out of 400 is not a bad score for a young college pupil and that could secure admission to the university; and if she has higher grades at her West African Examinations Council, WAEC, Senior School Certificate Examinations, SSCE, results; the cumulative of performance at both examinations bodies is what secures a percentage for admission in any university, in recent time, in Nigeria Institution.
Of course, forgery is unacceptable in academics and it should not be a big deal to detect as the tasks ahead will catch up with any individual claiming an academic reputation he or she is not qualified for.
This is not to justify that appropriate action should not, in fact, have been taken; however, the publicity of unverified news of forgery while the investigation was ongoing at the Department of State Services, DSS, is rather unfortunate and uncalled for.
Thankfully, since the scores were generated from the JAMB website with a number of security codes, it is easy to know where the error or forgery actually came from.
The young lady, Ejikeme Joy Mmesoma, had only printed her result page from a computer center, according to her, by imputing some passcode number on a scratch card as expected and she only printed out what she saw.
From her account of the story, she doesn’t have the capacity to inflate any result, although, she claimed the barcode on the slip, when scanned, did not tally with her name and it actually reflected another candidate’s name who had a different score entirely.
Right now, for those who understood biometrics and tech, you will realize this is blatantly a computer error from the JAMB system and it is very common, as a matter of fact, a major demerit in information technology, data analysis, and artificial intelligence. A similar representation could be what we refer to as false positive and true negative, where the test results don’t tally with the actual situation.
Nevertheless, the investigation was still ongoing and the frenzy of claims that the candidate had forged results to obtain a scholarship was rather unprofessional, I could say it was nothing but resentment towards the glory of the promising young lady.
Thankfully, the lady had explained her ordeal and emotionally traumatizing experience at the situation and she said she had always been a top-flight pupil since her nursery school days, and right now, she wouldn’t need to inflate any grade to have what she scored at the UTME; moreover, perhaps, the Matriculation Body should investigate what she scored in her WAEC grades before exposing their vindictiveness at the poor girl.
No doubt cases of forgery of scores are rife among candidates and there was an initial scheme where the oral tests or written examinations are conducted to weed out incompetent candidates at the various local tertiary institutions the pupils had applied to; howbeit, the ‘power’ that be had influenced and upturned the scheme for local verification and invariably, such has burdened the university system having to deal with students who could not cope with the academic rigorous involvements, activities and challenges.
Moreover, the situation is exacerbated by the lecturers who aren’t even interested in teaching or aim at achieving academic excellence with the students they have to oversee; meaning, any candidate who had forged his/her way through to the university might still have to survive an already corrupt system with some much laxity and lackadaisical attitudes of the teachers; if not, for a candidate to claim bogus scores at entrance examinations is never a big deal to detect and weed out, if the system is right and explicit enough at achieving appropriate academic duties and excellence.
Now to the double standard of the Nigerian society whch will never query woeful performance or poverty but will have all eyes on success to always bring down, I hope they reconsider their ways early.
A similar situation also challenged the glory of the world record holder in Cook-a-thon, Hilda Baci, in which many unrelated and unsolicited allegations erupted alleging that she shouldn’t be recognized for her hard labour and attempt by the Guinness World Record.
And of course, my unprecedented academic expedition which many principal officers and lecturers in my own workplace termed as ‘going for conferences and reading literature reviews up and down’ and this brings me to the thought if Nigeria was ever ready for the greatness we pray for if all we do is to pull every one of our great lads down with lie and unfounded allegations.
To my beautiful young and calm Ejikeme Joy Mmesoma, this is a form of discouragement, and it is clear that the Devil and the agents of darkness have seen your glory and they are ready to dent it with lies and defamation; and I will just advise her parents to keep her success low key if they don’t want the girl’s mental wellbeing to be tampered with.
It is our work in Nigeria to always pull the glory of our stars down; nothing more, and moreover, the major reason we are at this state of darkness and backwardness.
What do the righteous do with this faulty foundation?
Benjamin Adebisi is a lecturer at Osun State University.
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