Hon. Gibson Akporehe is the House of Representatives candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) for Okpe/Sapele/Uvwie Constituency, Delta State. In this interview with Deputy Political Editor RAYMOND MORDI, he clears the air on the allegation of forged death certificate leveled against him and other APC chieftains by an opponent who lost at the primary election, Christopher Anirah.
Why did the All Progressives Congress (APC) fail to win the Okpe/Sapele/Uvwie Federal Constituency in the last election?
I am Hon. Gibson Akporehe from Uvwie Local Government Area of Delta State; the candidate for the Okpe/Sapele/Uvwie Federal Constituency under the platform of the All Progressive Congress (APC) in the just concluded election. I contested that election with three other candidates from the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP), the Labour Party (LP) and the Social Democratic Party (SDP). The result of the election was officially in favour of the PDP candidate, in spite of the anomalies that marred the election. We are contesting it in the court and we are very hopeful that justice will be dispensed in this matter.
One of your opponents, Christopher Anirah, alleged that you forged his death certificate to procure the APC ticket. What actually happened?
First, I would like to say that I as a person I did not forge the death certificate of Anirah; neither did the party leadership forge the said document. The said Anirah manufactured those documents to fend off prosecution which I threatened to initiate against him and his collaborators fingered in the forgery of “my withdrawal letter” from the election to pave way for his candidacy. I will take you back to the genesis of this controversy. On the December 18, 2014, my name was forwarded by the leadership of the APC to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as their candidate for the Okpe/Sapele/Uvwie Federal Constituency. Shortly afterwards, my name was published on INEC website and it remained on the website and notice boards till January 14, 2015 when it was withdrawn. How was my name withdrawn from the website? Anirah set in motion wrongfully or illegally the machinery to delete my name from the list of candidates running for the election. I believed he did it with the connivance of some unscrupulous party officials who manufactured a letter of withdrawal which was ascribed to me and in that said letter my signature was simulated, tending to establish that I withdrew from the race; that document with other documents that were also ascribed to the National Chairman, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun forwarding his (Anirah’s) name were presented to INEC. Meanwhile, in the letter that was ascribed to the National Chairman, his signature was also forged and so it was these forged documents that INEC was acting on when information reached me on January 9. I immediately flew into Abuja with my lawyer to lodge a complaint against the substitution process in its inchoate state and dissociate myself from that letter ascribed to me. Beside the letter my lawyer wrote, I also wrote telling INEC I never withdrew from the race and made it very clear that I was still the candidate. We also pointed out some irregularities in the documents which Anirah forwarded to INEC seeking to replace me. In spite of those manifest deficiencies in the entire documents and my protest, INEC still went ahead to remove my name from the website on January 14, 2015. I left INEC for the national headquarters of my party to lay my complaint. I wrote series of letters to INEC, demanding reinstatement of my name and further posited that if my name was not re-instated, I was going to institute an action against them and one national commissioner of INEC, Irene Irhemire from Delta State. She was the person being used to perpetrate all this against me. So, on January 14, 2015, my name was wrongfully withdrawn from the race. I fought and eventually my name was re-instated on March 27, a day to the election. This belated reinstatement of my name exposed me to grave disadvantages in the election.
Anirah alleged that you conspired with your party leadership to forge the death certificate…
After my name was removed from INEC list, I came back home and then met the local leadership of the party. I drew their attention to my wrongful substitution and threatened I was going to lodge a criminal complaint against them and prosecute them as well in a civil suit.
So, in response to my reaction, Anirah was then invited. On arrival, he was presented with what I had tabled before the party leadership. I made it very clear that I was not going to accept any solution that is less than my reinstatement as the party’s candidate for the election. They said I should give them some time; so we retired from the meeting. But, after a while they invited me and at the meeting, they intimated me that Anirah had agreed to produce documents that will enable my name to be re-instated as the candidate. I told them if that was done, then I would not prosecute anybody, so I left for Warri. Two days after, they called me to say that Anirah was with the Deputy State Chairman and my attention was needed. Of course, I drove straight to Sapele and subsequently the three of us met. At the meeting, Anirah brought out documents from a folder which he handed over to the Deputy State Chairman. I perused through it and observed that it was a death certificate/an affidavit that were written in the name of Anirah. He handed over the documents to the State Deputy Chairman and asked him to take it to Abuja in order to reinstate my name on INEC website as the candidate of the party. That was how my name resurfaced on INEC list.
But, shortly after that, Anirah started contesting my reinstatement, in response to the pressure from his immediate supporters. He went to Odigie-Oyegun to complain that his death certificate was forged.
But, the allegation was that the APC Chairman was privy to the forgery?
For me that is the most irresponsible and insensitive statement to make about the person of Chief Odigie-Oyegun. The only role he played in the matter was the administrative processing of the correspondence that came to him from the state. How do you expect an experienced administrator like Chief Odigie-Oyegun to act on the claim of an individual that he was not dead where there are documents showing that the person bearing the name was dead; the only thing that would have persuaded the Chairman to accede to such request that the certificate was forged was a court order nullifying those set of documents that declared the person bearing that name dead; the man knew that option but he did not follow that route because he was not sincere. He did what he did to satisfy those sponsoring him; if he actually wanted Chief Odigie-Oyegun to revert what he had already agreed on to do, he would have done what was necessary in law to persuade the Chairman to forward his name to INEC in replacement of my name. But, he did not go to court to nullify those documents. So, how could Odigie-Oyegun have disregarded those documents? The man is too experience to be deceived into illegal trap.
How well do you know Mr. Anirah?
The only encounter I had with him after the primary was when I came from Abuja to ask the party leaders in Sapele to produce him; that was when I actually met him face-to-face, beside the brief encounter during the primaries. He has not been in politics; he must be a new entrant into the political game.
Was he at any point coerced by you or the party leadership to fake his death?
There was no coercion, except that I was very vehement. I made it clear that no intervention of any personality will change my mind; that the only thing that will change the course of action is when my name is reinstated. When they saw the vehemence, the other people did not have any other option than to prevail on him to do it and he had to do it because he did not want to be prosecuted or subject himself to unnecessary litigations.
Why is he reneging?
The truth is that Anirah was used to discredit the party. From the onset, he did not come with a sincere motive; he only came acting the script of his PDP sponsors.
