A leading nongovernmental organisation in Enugu State has explained the reason for the massive rejoicing and excitement throughout the state following the disclosure by the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) Director General, Brigadier General Yushua’u Ahmed, on ARISE Television last Friday morning that the NYSC Discharge Certificate A808297 which the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) gubernatorial candidate in the 2023 general election, Peter Mbah, submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), is fake.

According to the Enugu State Stakeholders Forum (ESSF), tremendous excitement “owes to the fact that the people “can’t wait to see the Election Petitions Tribunal remove the so-called governor-elect from office.

“Mbah is a usurper who colluded with a handful of corrupt elements in INEC to see if he can wangle himself into the gubernatorial seat, and events of the last few days have confirmed he is extremely unpopular”, declared the ESSF in a statement issued Monday in Enugu, signed by Professor Joseph Aneke and Dr Ifeanyi Agbo, the president and secretary of the group, respectively.

Enugu State has become like a massive graveyard since INEC declared Mbah the winner on March 22, observed the group, “unlike in neighbouring Abia State where the people have been rejoicing because the authentic winner of the election, Dr Alex Otti of the Labour Party, was officially pronounced the winner the very day Mbah carried out a coup d’etat against the Enugu people”.

The association accused the PDP candidate of forging not just the NYSC discharge certificate but also the March 18 governorship election result, saying that the people were tired of being ruled by the PDP since 1999 and so voted for change in all five elections.

“That’s why the Labour Party won overwhelmingly in the presidential election with 88.7%, won seven out of the eight House of Representatives seats, won two out of the three senatorial seats, and won 14 of the 24 House of Assembly seats”.

The stakeholders remarked that Mbah shot himself in the foot by allowing himself to be marketed by a former controversial governor, Dr Chimaraoke Nnamani, and the current governor, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, who was on February 25 roundly defeated by Okey Ezeah in not just the Enugu North senatorial zone but also in his polling booth, polling unit, hometown, and local government area.

Dr Nnamani, a serving senator and two-term governor, was defeated by a rookie politician, Sir Kelvin Chukwu, in the Enugu East senatorial election held on March 18 following the assassination on February 22 of the LP candidate, Chief Oyibo Chukwu, Sir Kelvin’s elder brother.

“Having dawned on them that they are unpopular, both Nnamani and Ugwuanyi have quietly gone out of public circulation while Mbah, the purported governor-elect, hides in the midst of security agents for fear of being lynched by the very people he claims to have voted for him”, said the Enugu stakeholders.

“The number of votes awarded to the PDP candidate is so ridiculous that even INEC, compromised and conniving as it is, announced on March 22 that it has halved Mbah’s votes from over 31,000 in Mbah’s home Nkanu East LGA which comprises only villages and rural communities, and has no towns”.

The ESSF advised the PDP candidate to mitigate the cost of his loss by throwing in the towel quickly.

It stated: “Going the whole hog at the Election Petitions Tribunal makes no sense, just like it doesn’t make sense that outgoing Governor Ugwuanyi has been ordering local government chairmen to have Peter Mbah’s billboards everywhere to create the illusion that he is popular.

“Mbah has no reason not to go the way of Alhaji Salusi Buhari, the first Speaker of the House of Representatives in the Fourth Republic, who falsely claimed to have attended Toronto University in Canada and resigned; Mrs Kemi Adeosun, President Muhammadu Buhari’s first Minister of Finance, who submitted a false NYSC discharge certificate and had to resign in 2018; and Mr Biobarakuma Degi-Eremioye, the deputy to David Lyon, the Bayelsa State governor-elect, who was disqualified by the Supreme Court from assuming office with his boss on the eve of their swearing-in on February 14, 2020, because he provided false information about himself in his form to INEC.

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