By Onyewuchi Ojinnaka
Edo State Governor, Godwin Obaseki, on Friday gave his former political party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), a bloody legal nose when the Supreme Court dismissed the appeal filed by the ruling party challenging his academic qualification.
A panel of the apex court, in a judgment held that the appellants – APC and one of its chieftains, Edobor Williams – failed to prove their case beyond reasonable doubt.
The court added that the appellants failed woefully to prove their case as they did not provide any disclaimer from the school that the certificate, whose authenticity they challenged, was not issued to Obaseki by the institution.
It proceeded to uphold the March 18, 2021 judgment of the Court of Appeal, which earlier affirmed the January 9, 2021 judgment of the Federal High Court in Abuja upholding the authenticity of the first degree certificate in Classics issued to Obaseki by the University of Ibadan (UI).
The Court of Appeal in Abuja had on March 18 dismissed the appeal filed by the APC against the January 9, 2021 judgment of the Federal High Court, Abuja affirming the authenticity of the academic certificates presented by Edo Governor Godwin Obaseki.
In the judgment, a three-man panel of the court, led by Justice Stephen Adah, was unanimous in upholding the argument by Obaseki’s legal team, led by Ken Mozia (SAN) that the appeal by the APC and one of its members, was without merit.
The Court held that the Federal High Court, in its judgment by Justice Ahmed Mohammed, was right to have held that the APC failed to discharge the burden of proving its claim that Obaseki presented a forged certificate to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to contest the last governorship election in Edo State.
In upholding the judgment of the Federal High Court, the Appeal Court further held that the judgment by Justice Mohammed was without any ambiguity and that the APC failed in proving its case.
“The findings of the lower court cannot be faulted,” it held.
At the Federal High Court, the APC and Williams had claimed, in the suit marked: FHC/B/CS/74/2020, that Obaseki forged his West African School Certificate O/level and A/level, and the first-degree certificate from the University of Ibadan (UI), which he submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in his bid to contest the September 19, 2020 governorship election.
In his judgment on January 9, 2021, Justice Mohammed said a “fundamental flaw in the case of the plaintiffs is that while the plaintiffs alleged forgery against the first defendant (Obaseki), the evidence they brought was completely at variance with the allegation.”
He found as lazy, the attitude of the plaintiffs, who did not make any efforts to cross-check from the University of Ibadan (UI) and the West African Examination Council (WAEC), the two institutions that issued the certificates they claimed Obaseki forged.