To doubt, the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has made giant stride since the era of Prof Ishaq Oloyede, unlike the previous era when snakes munched money that should be in the nation’s coffers as lunch. For many years, JAMB was synonymous with scandal, selling marks while their staff lived large. It was an era when people who wanted to read law, could offer physics, chemistry and mathematics, instead of literature, religious knowledge and history.

With detachable passport photos on the examination admission cards, dubious JAMB examiners in connivance with criminally-minded candidates easily changed the passport photos of candidates with that of university graduates in the core sciences to sit for the exams. The science of embossed photos and biometrics were still in the womb of scientists. But all that free-for-all banditry seems to have ended, with the coming of Oloyede and advancement in identity security solutions.

JAMB not only gained respectability in the quality of examinations they conducted, they became a cash cow for the cash strapped federal government. So, JAMB has been on a cruise as a model agency of government, until one Mmesoma Ejikeme, wanted to shoot it down. While claiming to be intelligent all her life, coming first in class since the beginning of her time in school, Mmesoma was determined to come tops again, with the best JAMB result in 2023.

When she couldn’t make the top scores perspiring, she invented the means through self-help. After all, in her desperation coming tops is all that matters, damn the procedure. If she had stared down JAMB in the recent crisis, all the great work of Oloyede would have been made a mockery of, by the netizen army, which can wreck any reputation in a matter of hours. But Oloyede had laid traps, akin to the rat gum, to safeguard the reputation of his agency.

Rat gum as it is called, is an interesting trap to catch rats. When a rat lands on it, it stays entrapped by the gum. Though reasonably unharmed, it awaits slaughter even by the weakest of the children. The more the rat tries to escape, the more the gum entangles it, and the more it gets messier bathing in the gum. Such was the imagery that came to my mind, as Mmesoma tried to wriggle herself out of the self-inflicted mess she landed herself in.

While this column will not waste energy on either of the two sides, who engage in worthless pastimes, it disagrees with the JAMB’s kneejerk reaction to Mmesoma’s misdemeanour. The claim in some quarters that since the girl has subsequently admitted her wrongdoing, whatever JAMB did is right does not hold water. JAMB did not administer the basic principle of fair hearing, which is a fundamental principle of natural justice, before it slammed her with three-year ban from writing future JAMB exams.

While administrative adjudication, which is what JAMB engaged in, in dealing with the Mmesoma’s case, has been recognized in legal theory as a way of dealing with administrative cases, there are fundamental principles that must be observed. Learned author Ese Malami, captured it in his book on Administrative Law. First, the tribunal, officer or authority must observe any rule of procedure or process of adjudication laid down for it by statute or terms of reference.

Secondly, it must observe the rules of natural justice or fair hearing, that is, the due process of law, for that is the basic requirement incumbent on any person, or body who aspires or undertakes to decide any matter. In Mmesoma’s case, it appears that the brouhaha from especially her netizen sympathizers got the better part of JAMB officials and its sympathizers. After issuing a statement that the result was fake, which it is rightly entitled to do, JAMB subsequently went ahead to sanction her arbitrarily.

A simple procedure of writing her and requesting her to defend the allegation of forgery would have sufficed, to satisfy the requirement of fair hearing. Again, it is important that the punishment which JAMB meted out is known and provided for in advance, before the misdemeanour allegedly committed by Mmesoma. That is the import of section 36(8) of the 1999 constitution (as amended). If the three year-ban came from the whiff of Oloyede’s angst against the temerity of Mmesoma to mess up his reputation, then the court would most likely shoot it down.

Since this column is about law and public power, it may not be fair to use the Jesus standard of asking only those who have never forged documents to cast the first stone on the lying Mmesoma. Of course, the Anambra State government after confirming the forgery, through a panel of enquiry, has asked that she be treated by a psychologist.