Ahead of the impending judgment by the Enugu State Governorship and State House of Assembly Election Petitions Tribunal on the gubernatorial vote of March 18, the Network of Evangelical Bishops of Nigeria (NEBN), Southeast Zone, has advised Governor Peter Mbah to accept the judgment rather than appeal against it.

“Mbah has wasted our time and resources enough since he connived with some elements in the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to declare him on Wednesday, March 22, 2023, the winner of the election held four days earlier”, the bishops said in a statement issued over the weekend and signed by their chairman, Bishop Samuel Anih, and their acting publicity secretary, Bishop Emmanuel Eneh.

“We have learned authoritatively that he has given up on the Election Petitions Tribunal because of the overwhelming evidence against him, but his team is already working on how to influence the Court of Appeal justices in order to get them to rule in his favour when he appeals against the judgment of the Tribunal, the way his team compromised INEC which gave a ridiculous result on the governorship on March 22, 2023”.

Describing the Court of Appeal justices as just, fair-minded, and capable jurists with integrity, the senior religious leaders foretold that Mbah would lose at the appellate court because, according to them, he is not qualified to run for the governorship and did not win the election.

The National Youth Service (NYSC) discharge certificate with number A808297 Mbah presented to INEC is forged, according to the NYSC Director General, Brigadier Ahmed, and the Director of Certification, Alhaji Abubakar Mohammed, as well as the Assistant Director of Certification, Mrs. Rhoda Dada, in their separate testimonies.

Various Nigerian public officers discovered to have presented forged documents have all lost their positions, including President Muhammadu Buhari’s first finance minister Kemi Adeosun, and House of Representatives Speaker Mohammed Salusi Buhari in 1999, and Bayelsa deputy governor elect Biobarakuma Degi-Eremioye who was removed by the Supreme Court in February 2020, alongside governor-elect David Lyon, as well as Muktar Yerima, a member of the House of Representatives who was four days ago declared ineligible to hold public office by the Kano State Governorship and State House of Assembly Election Petitions Tribunal.

Compounding his woe, said the bishops, “is the fact that Mbahdid not win the gubernatorial race; INEC merely allocated to him over 16,000 votes in his Nkanu East Local Government Area, an action it can't defend anywhere in the world.”

“Even when the Election Petitions Tribunal gave INEC two days to present witnesses, the electoral body couldn’t produce even one witness”, they further said. The bishops added that the situation “is as funny as when Mbah presented as a witness one fellow who claimed to be from the Department of State Service (DSS) and had investigated the NYSC, but couldn’t present a document showing he works there nor anything indicating he has the organisation’s mandate to represent it at the tribunal, let alone being assigned the task of investigating NYSC’s position on Mbah”.

The bishops recalled how the governor's Chief of Staff, Victor Udeh, who claimed that Mbah did his NYSC primary assignment in his law firm in Lagos in 2003, was confronted with documents at the election petitions tribunal showing that “our purported governor was, in fact, serving during this period as the Chief of Staff to Governor Chimaroke Nnamani, complete with signed letters of appointment and resumption of duties”.

Southeast NEBN also recalled how both Mbah and Udeh were shocked also at the tribunal with Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) charge sheets of 2007 detailing the “financial atrocities they committed against the government and people of Enugu State as government officials, thus publicly making a mess of their claim that they were then working in a private law firm in Lagos.

“The armada of 15 Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SANs), assembled from all parts of the country with enormous resources of Enugu people couldn’t help Mbah’s watery case”.

They accused the governor of worsening the security crisis in the state with what they called his ill-advised and ill-thought-out security steps.

“He is so inept that he is already making his predecessor, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, look like an excellent administrator and leader”, they remarked.

Ugwuanyi made national headlines last February when, as a sitting governor running for the Senate, he was well defeated in his polling booth, polling unit, his hometown of Orba, and his Udenu Local Government Area as well as the entire Enugu North senatorial zone by Barrister Okey Ezeah of the Labour Party because his Nsukka people consider his record of achievements poor.

“Mbah should stop wasting our time and sources and accept the verdict of the Enugu Election Petitions Tribunal anytime it is given”, the bishops stated.

“Mbah, more than any other person since the creation of our beloved state on August 27, 1991, has set Enugu back owing to his personal vaulting ambitions to be the governor at all costs”.

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