Alleged Certificate Forgery: Court Decides Obaseki’s Fate Saturday

The Federal High Court sitting in Abuja will on Saturday, January 9, 2021 deliver judgment in the alleged certificate forgery case filed against Governor Godwin Obaseki of Edo State by the All Progressives Congress (APC) and a chieftain of the party, Edobor Williams.

Justice Ahmed Mohammed took the date and time to decide on Obaseki’s fate on Thursday, January 7 after counsels to both parties adopted their final written addresses.

After adopting the their final written addresses, Counsel for Obaseki, Ken Mozia (SAN) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Razaq Isenalumhe, urged the court to dismiss the suit for lacking in merit.

Also, Isenalumhe prayed the court to award substantial cost against the plaintiffs, even as Mozia urged the court to hold that the plaintiffs failed woefully to prove their case beyond reasonable doubt.

In his submission, Counsel representing the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Murktar Bawa, said; “We did not file any process in this suit and have consistently remained neutral.

Therefore, “We urge the court to decide the case one way or the other in accordance with the processes before it.”

The plaintiffs had in the suit marked: FHC/B/CS/74/2020, requested the court to, among others, disqualify Obaseki as the candidate of the PDP in the September 19, 2020 governorship election.

In their arguments, they accused the Governor Obaseki of forging his first degree certificate, which he claimed to have obtained from the University of Ibadan in 1979 and submitted to INEC as part of his educational qualifications.

They also claimed that a photocopy of the degree certificate attached to the nomination form that Obaseki submitted to INEC did not contain the signature of the Registrar of the university and the date it was issued.

However, offering his defence in the forgery case, Governor Obaseki said the Registrar’s signature and date of issue were cut off from the photocopies of his certificate submitted to INEC because the person who made the copies used A4, which is smaller than the size of the original certificate.

The PDP and INEC called no witnesses in the case while the plaintiffs had six witnesses testifying and tendering documents in support of their case.

To defend himself, Governor Obaseki called three witnesses to support his case.