Federal High Court in Abuja yesterday voided the Certificate of Return issued by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to Christian Abah, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate for the Ado/Okpokwu/Ogbadibo Federal Constituency in Benue State.
The House of Representatives candidate was found guilty of forging the certificate he presented to INEC.
In a judgment yesterday, Justice Adeniyi Ademola held that the allegation of certificate forgery levelled against Abah by the plaintiff, Hassan Saleh, was true.
Saleh, who emerged second behind Abah in the PDP primaries, claimed that Abah forged an Ordinary National Diploma (OND) certificate in Accountancy he claimed to have obtained from the Federal Polytechnic, Mubi, in 1985.
Justice Ademola said his findings revealed that an earlier judgment of the National/State Assembly Election Petition Tribunal sitting in Makurdi, the state capital, delivered on September 6, 2011, and a letter by the Registrar of the polytechnic, Suleiman Buba, confirmed that the certificate presented by Abah to INEC was forged.
The judge granted the 11 prayers sought by the plaintiff and four other ancillary reliefs.
The judge ordered that Abah be prosecuted for forgery, perjury and falsification of results.
Abah had been declared unopposed and elected, being the only candidate presented for the March 28 election.
Justice Ademola declared all the votes that accrued to Abah in the PDP’s primaries on December 6, 2014, as wasted.
The judge also declared Saleh the winner of the primaries.
He directed INEC to issue a fresh certificate of return to Saleh.
The court also ordered the incoming Speaker of the Eighth National Assembly to swear in Saleh as the member representing Ado/Okpokwu/Ogbadibo Federal Constituency.
Justice Ademola came down hard on the defence lawyer, Sunday Ameh (SAN), for the “frivolous applications and tactics” to delay to frustrate the hearing of the case.