The certificate forgery petition brought against Hon Nnanna Igbokwe of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) by the APGA candidate for the Ahiazu/Ezinihitte federal constituency Chief Chidi Ibe was yesterday dismissed for lack of merit by Hon Justice Adebara A.A led election Tribunal sitting at the Owerri High Court.
In their painstaking Judgement/Ruling, the Panel took a constructive, in depth and comprehensive analysis of the petition, arguments and written submission/Addresses of the counsels. Two out of the four grounds in the petition were dropped by the petitioner, the dropped grounds were an allege election malpractice during the 25/2/12 runoff election and an allegation that the winner, Hon. Igbokwe was not elected by the majority. Then the two grounds that were argued include an alleged certified forgery and an alleged violation of theAppeal Courtstipulated 90 days to conduct the runoff election.
However, the panel ruled that the election did not violate the Electoral Act or the Appeal Courtstipulated 90 days as 25/2/2012 was the 90th day of the stipulated time, using the Gregorian calendar where the computation started on the 26th of November 2011. The second issue was the alleged certificate forgery. The court ruled that the petitioner failed beyond doubt to prove the alleged forged certificate, noting that for the fact that there is an alleged false statement (date) in the certificate did not in any way make it a forged one.
The Court ruled that the NYSC and the Bsc certificates were certified by their owners (National Youth Service Corps) andAbiaStateUniversitywhich appeared on supina to the Tribunal as their original documents which they issued to the holder, Hon Nnanna Igbokwe on merit. Consequently they dismissed the petition for lack of merit after the two grounds were ruled in favour of the respondent, Hon Nnanna Igbokwe.
