Forged certificate: WAEC Exam Officer named in Suswam’s case

[MrVan]

By Peter Duru

MAKURDI—Mr.Terver Kakih, who is challenging the election of Governor Gabriel Suswam at the Federal High Court, Makurdi, on grounds of alleged improper conduct of the PDP ward congresses and certificate forgery, yesterday, claimed he got the information about the alleged certificate forgery from an examination officer with West African Examinations Council, WAEC.

Upon cross examination at the resumption of hearing on the matter by WAEC's Counsel, Mr. Emmanuel Enebeli, Kakih also said he was not at the WAEC office when the alleged forgery took place.

Kakih said he did not have copies of Suswam's GCE 1982 Certificate to show to the court even as he had attached the ones used by Suswam to fill Form CF001 which was later used for screening and were all rejected by court when he wanted to tender them.

When asked by counsel to Governor Suswam, Mr. Jibrin Okutepa, SAN, of his source of the information that Governor Suswam allegedly forged the WAEC certificate to run for the election, he simply said he met the WAEC certification officer.

The plaintiff could not also give the exact number of delegates that were supposed to be elected from the 276 wards in Benue State for the primaries.

Numbers, delegates

Kakih, who had said during cross examination that three delegates were supposed to be elected from each of the 276 wards for the governorship primaries, later said the total number of the delegates who were not elected but selected was 728 instead of 828.

This was even as he could not put to use the pen and paper given to him to calculate the total number of delegates that were supposed to be elected in the 276 wards.

Meanwhile, Justice Marcel Awokulehin adjourned the case till today to enable the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, tender its documents. Terver Kakih was the ninth witness to be cross examined by counsel to both Governor Suswam and WAEC.

Vanguard Nigeria