The All Progressives Congress (APC) in Niger State has been hit with large scale certificate forgery scandal involving candidates contesting in the forthcoming local government election.

No fewer than three chairmanship and four coucillorship candidates are reported to be neck deep in charges of certificate forgery, with the Department of State Security (DSS) helping the party to unravel the authenticity of the certificate they have submitted to the State Independent Electoral Commission.

This development, Daily Sun, has exclusively gathered, had prevented the party from submitting the final list of successful candidates to the state electoral body after the party primaries three weeks ago to ensure that only the names of candidate who did not have any questionable certificate were cleared and submitted, to avoid losing the seat to the opposition part through litigation.

A very close source to the party secretariat in Minna told Daily Sun that the party had received a number of petitions which borders on falsification of educational certificates by some candidates both for chairmanship and coucillorhip positions.

“We have received a lot of petitions, three against chairmanship aspirants and some counselorship aspirants that they forged their educational certificates,” the source said.

“The party is therefore trying to verify the authenticity of these certificates so we don’t field a wrong candidates, whereby after the election the opposition party will challenge it in court and claim the mandate.

“This is the main reason why the party has not submitted the names of the successful candidates after the party primaries about three weeks ago. The party doesn’t want to take any chance, so any candidate that is found to have forged his educational certificate will be disqualified,” he said.

However, a copy of one of such petitions of certificate forgery against one of the chairmanship candidates from Paikoro local government area of the state made available to Daily Sun alleged that his Grade 11 certificate, which he submitted to the party, was forged.

The petition, written by Garkuwa Support Group (GSO), dated September 17, 2019, titled “Petition Against The Candidature Of Hon. Yohana Yakubu For Chairmanship Of Paikoro Local Government In The Forthcoming Election In The 0latform Of All Progressives Congress,” said: “There is a strong suspicion that all the documents submitted by Hon. Yohanna Yakubu for the purpose of contesting the election were all forged.”

The petition which was signed by one Comrade Hamsun Isah pointed out when the allegation of certificate forgery got to the ears of the candidate by way of privilege information, “he quickly withdrew the forged SSCE certificate and replaced it with Grade 11 statement of results which he claimed to have obtained in 2009 but was issued to him in 2015.

The petitioner also alleged that the candidate “is presently using two primary school certificates from the same school and one out of the two was altered,” wondering why a person could be using two primary school certificates issued by one school.

According to the petitioner, “this alone is enough for his disqualification because the facts are already known to the opposition party. If we refuse to handle the matter, we may lose the chairmanship seat of Paikoro local government to the opposition who are waiting for the general election to reclaim the mandate.”

All attempts to obtain the reaction of the state APC Chairman, Engineer Jibrin Iman, on this development failed as he did not respond to phone calls or text messages by our correspondent.

Meanwhile, the opposition PDP and APGA have all submitted the names of candidates for both chairmanship and counselorship for 25 local government areas and the 274 wards for the November 23rd local government election. (Sunday Sun)

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