All Progressives Congress (APC) and one of its chieftains, Mr. Williams Edobor, has dragged Governor Godwin Obaseki of Edo State to court, alleging that the Governor forged his University of Ibadan degree certificate, which he used in securing his candidacy for the September governorship election in the state.
The September election that looks like the Lord’s Chosen election could be turned down by the tribunal if the evidence presented against the People’s Democratic Party’s candidate were proved beyond any reasonable doubt.
The APC is alleging that the first-degree certificate submitted by Obaseki to the Independent National Electoral Commission was forged to enable the governor to contest the September 19 governorship election in Edo.
There are discrepancies in the subjects Obaseki claimed he passed in his West African Examination Council (WAEC) exam. It claimed that the Governor barely passed three credits and that no evidence he got special admission, making him not eligible to be admitted into any first-degree course in UI.
The party is alleging that Obaseki supplied contrasting and diametrically opposed information to INEC. It alleged that in 2016, he swore to an affidavit that he finished from Eghosa Anglican Grammar School in 1973 and immediately proceeded to UI to study Classics where he graduated in 1976. Thus, Obaseki had claimed to have graduated in 1976 through an affidavit in 2016 and another 1979 certificate of the same first-degree in the same institution in the 2020 oath.
Obaseki, in 2016, was challenged by the PDP when he won his first governorship election in Edo, giving the same allegation before he joined the PDP to contest his second term in 2020.
Obaseki was disqualified from seeking a second term on the APC platform as a result of the error.
According to the APC News Online, the party alleged that in 2016, the PDP, Godwin Obaseki’s new Party, did research at UI and discovered that Obaseki contested as Welfare Secretary in his hall of residence in 1977, and still wrote exams in 1978. It claimed that this aroused the curiosity of the party and went to court.
It claimed that the case was struck out then, as a result of the constitutional amendment introducing a time limit to pre-election matters, whose assent was backdated.
Recent Development of the Proceedings
On Wednesday, the Federal High Court sitting in Abuja accepted more documents from the APC, to prove its allegation of certificate forgery against Obaseki.
The two new documents included a University of Ibadan degree certificate, belonging to Emmanuel Balogun and a report by a forensic document examiner, Raphael Onwuzuligbo.
The court, however, admitted the documents in evidence. The first-degree certificate in Agricultural science tendered to the court was awarded to Balogun in 1979, the same year as that of Obaseki.
The court admitted the second document with a caveat following objections to its admissibility raised by the Counsel to Obaseki, Ken Mozia (SAN).
Balogun, during the cross-examination, told the court that he had never seen the controversial degree certificate issued to Obaseki by the University of Ibadan’s authority.
He also admitted that he had never worked in the admission office of the institution, noting that he was not in the position to comment on Obaseki’s certificate.
According to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), the witness tendered the degree certificate issued to him by the University of Ibadan in 1979 and informed the court that generally, certificates were signed by the Vice Chancellors and Registrars, and they always carried dates.
The PDP challenged the APC’s attempt to call in their fourth witness on the ground that the plaintiffs had exhausted the number of days provided by the court for them to present their witnesses.
However, Justice Ahmed Mohammed overruled the objection, with the claim that a lot of issues came up that affected the time given to the plaintiffs to close their cases. Mohammed added that similar consideration would be extended to the defendants.
Earlier in November, The Nation reported that the PDP admitted that there was an error in Obaseki’s UI Certificate, blaming the photocopy machine for the error.
The PDP also added that there was a mix-up in the admission and graduation year of the Edo state Governor, and admitted that Obaseki observed his National Youth Service Corps despite the error.
The paper wrote, “It added that the petition was incompetent and statute-barred, describing it as a pre-election matter ‘which the tribunal could not entertain’.”
It went further to quote PDP that, “While filling the forms for the election in 2016, Obaseki mistakenly filled in 1976 as the year of graduation, which was actually the year of his admission into UI.
“At the time Obaseki was completing his Form CF001 in 2016, he deposed to an affidavit, saying he had misplaced the originals of all his certificates, while changing offices, with the intention to apply for a re-issuance of the certificates.
“Subsequently, before Obaseki submitted his Form EC9 in 2020, the original certificate issued by UI was found, which has the signatures of then Vice-Chancellor and Registrar. The original certificate was issued in A5 size. However, in order for the photocopy to be attached to Form CF001, the size was reduced to A4 and in the process, leaving out some information on it.
“The tribunal lacks the jurisdiction to entertain the petition because it is statute-barred; the issues raised by the petitioners are averments which are not relevant in determining the petition…”
