Over the weekend, a Twitter account purporting to belong to Nigeria’s president, Bola Tinubu, posted that the federal government was offering a scholarship to an embattled candidate of the 2023 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), Ejikeme Mmesoma, who has been at the centre of controversy regarding the forgery of her UTME result.
According to the viral Twitter post, Mmesoma’s conduct was a reflection of the president’s character and as such was deemed worthy of a scholarship.
The tweet concluded by stating that the Minister of Education had been ordered to give Mmesoma the best education the country could offer.
However, the Joint Admissions Matriculation Board (JAMB) had issue a disclaimer, stating that the UTME result being paraded by Mmesoma was not from the exam body.
Following the disclaimer, the Anambra State Government constituted a Committee of Inquiry to investigate the forgery allegations, which found that Mmesoma indeed manipulated her UTME result by falsely inflating the result from the actual score of 249 to 362.
This manipulation made her claim to be the top scorer in this year’s UTME, which earned her a N3m scholarship before the forgery revelation.
Claim: Bola Tinubu offers Mmesoma a scholarship
Verification
The CDD War Room conducted a verification process to examine the Twitter account that has since been deleted. The investigation revealed that the account was a parody and had no connection to the president of Nigeria, Bola Tinubu. However, it frequently posted humorous references to any scandal involving Tinubu. Prior to its removal, the account had amassed over a thousand followers.
Verdict: FALSE
The claim that Bola Tinubu offered Mmesoma a scholarship for forging her UTME result, is false. The CDD War Room confirms that the Twitter account that made the scholarship announcement was a parody account and had no connection with Tinubu.
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