The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board announced that it has turned over a 19-year-old candidate for the 2021-2022 Unified Tertiary and Matriculation Examination to the police for an inquiry into “result tampering.”

According to Prof Ishaq Oloyede, the board’s Registrar, who briefed journalists at JAMB’s headquarters in Abuja on Friday, the applicant, Chinedu John, claimed to have scored 380 in the June examination but was astonished to receive 265 from the board when the results were revealed.

Following the alleged “alteration” of the UTME result, the candidate’s father, John Ifenkpam, engaged Ikeazor Akaiwe, an Enugu-based lawyer, who wrote to JAMB requesting another chance for the son to retake the examination and demanding N1 billion in damages.

The Lawyer said according to Oloyede that the  N1 billion was intended to compensate the youngster for the physical and emotional pain he had experienced as a result of being offered “two separate scores.”

The candidate is believed to have claimed that the board “altered” his UTME scores from 2019 to 2021, denying him the opportunity to study his selected course – medicine.

Following an invitation from the board’s management, led by Oloyede, the candidate, his father, and lawyer went from Enugu State to Abuja on Friday.

Initially, the youngster was given a few minutes in a confidential session with his father and lawyers to “come clean” about the results he was displaying, but he insisted that his original exam score was 380.

After some back and forth, the board presented evidence to refute John’s and his legal representative’s assertion.

Documentary evidence presented by the board at the Friday meeting revealed that John received a 265 instead of the 380 he claimed.

Oloyede accused the candidate of tampering with the results, saying he will be turned over to the police for an inquiry and then prosecuted.

According to the registrar, John is one of 11 candidates who the board plans to pursue for allegedly falsifying their results.

He stated that the original result would be revoked pending further inquiry.

Oloyede said, “We have 11 of them who tampered with their results. Two of them are already being prosecuted. The remaining ones we are going to withdraw their results and prosecute them. The main purpose is to sanitise the system, including our own staff.

“There was never any communication of 380 with this boy. Because this boy has accused JAMB, we are going to withhold his result until the investigation is concluded. We are going to request that our interactions with him be subjected to the public.”

Ikeazor, his lawyer, pleaded with the board to allow more time for investigation.

“I will not stand against investigation. Let there be investigation but what I will not agree to is to prejudge him,” he said.

Earlier, John had said, “The result I have been receiving is not the result I am entitled to. In 2019, I wrote the first JAMB.

“The first time, they sent 328 and later, I saw 278 when I checked it. I printed it. I couldn’t meet up for admission that year. I wanted to study Medicine and Surgery at the University of Ibadan.

“In 2020, the same thing happened. I scored 343, but by the time I went to the portal to print, I saw 306. I used the 306 and it gave me admission in UI. But because I didn’t have Further Mathematics, I had to forfeit it.

“I decided to leave Medicine and Surgery for them in 2021 so I picked Petroleum Engineering. In 2021, JAMB issued me two results. I saw 380 the first time I checked and then the second time, I saw 265.”

Fabian Benjamin, the board’s Public Relations Officer, said, however, that the candidate confessed to the crime.

He said, “The candidate who was paraded for forging the Board’s result has confessed after the Board discovered that he saved his sister’s number on his phone as 55019 and used the phone to send the fake result to his phone.

“When he sends such results, they come as 55019.

“He pleaded for mercy that he had to do that when the result he got was not up to what could give him his desired programme.”

It could not be established if the boy confessed to any crime as at the time of writing.