A petition attempting to disqualify Governor Peter Mbah of Enugu State due to the issue surrounding the fake National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) certificate was denied by the Enugu State Election Petition Tribunal.
Chief Chris Agu, the Peoples Redemption Party candidate for the March 18 poll, had brought Mbah before the tribunal and demanded that the PDP candidate be disqualified for giving a fake NYSC certificate to INEC before of the election. Agu is requesting, among other things, to be proclaimed the winner of the election on the grounds that he received the majority of the legal votes cast.
The Chairman of the tribunal, Kudirat Akano, after examining arguments from both sides, ruled that the motion to strike out the case was premature, insisting that certificate forgery was a weighty matter. She also ruled that whatever counter or objection against the petition should be done at the end of the trial, when the tribunal will give final judgement on the validity or otherwise of their demand.
Speaking after the session on Friday, counsel to Chief Agu, Barr Alex Amujiogu said that lawyers informed the tribunal that they have exchanged their pretrial forms but revealed that there were some documents which were yet to be viewed by both counsels.
He said, “We also proposed in our individual capacity on how we intend the lawyers to go on to pursue the case so that at the end of the day, the tribunal will issue a pretrial report on how the parties are to present and conclude their cases. So the only issue that is now left in the pretrial is that there are some documents which were alluded to by the respondents which have not been front-loaded.
“So the tribunal in its wisdom is asking that the counsels should meet and ensure that all necessary documents which need to be tendered at the trial are in the purview of fellow counsels. The tribunal adjourned the matter to June 14 to conclude pretrial and to enable the tribunal to issue a report or a guideline on how the trial will commence.”