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• Act enables only political parties to scrutinise candidates’ credentials
• Stakeholders seek review of Electoral Act before 2027 general elections
• ‘Parties should be sanctioned for fake papers as deterrence’
Inadequacies of the Electoral Act 2022, like others before it, have emerged as the leeway for political aspirants to submit unverified credentials to contest for elections.
Based on the extant rules, only the political parties are empowered to conduct background checks on the credentials of their aspirants. By implication, neither the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) nor the security service agencies are saddled with the responsibility of background checks, including certificate verifications, in the pre-election processes.
Apparently peeved by the lacuna and routine brouhaha over certificate authenticity of some candidates, stakeholders have faulted the Electoral Act (2022) for not empowering INEC in confirming the originality of documents submitted by candidates.
In turn, they blamed political parties for not conducting thorough background checks on the certificates of their candidates and advocated tough sanctions for erring parties.
The narrative on how to prevent the country from further embarrassment over the genuineness of credentials of elected officers became necessary, following the litigation about the diploma certificate of Chicago State University (CSU) presented to INEC by President Bola Tinubu.
The presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, who is challenging the victory of President Tinubu at the Supreme Court, insisted that the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate presented forged CSU certificate to the INEC.
He also argued that the Tinubu, who attended the institution, was a female as indicated in some of the pre-admission forms he sighted, and obtained all necessary documents from the institution to advance his case. The documents have been submitted to the apex court last week.
Specifically, Section 29(5) of the Electoral Acts has it that, “Any aspirant who participated in the primaries of his political party who has reasonable grounds to believe that any information given by his political party’s candidate in the affidavit or any document submitted by that candidate in relation to his constitutional requirements to contest the election is false, may file a suit at the Federal High Court against that candidate seeking a declaration that the information contained in the affidavit is false.”
Such inherent loophole, stakeholders said, has largely been responsible for certificate controversies that have dotted elections in the Fourth Republic.
Recall that at the beginning of this democratic dispensation in 1999, the first Speaker of the House of Representatives, Salisu Buhari, who claimed to have a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Toronto, was later found to have obtained a diploma at the institution.
He also later admitted to have falsified his age and other educational qualifications. He also admitted not to have a genuine National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) certificate because he was also kicked out of Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) after the institution discovered that he used fake credentials to gain admission.
But he had no problem passing through the screening committee of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that fielded him for the election. Also, the case of Biobarakuma Degi-Eremienyo, who was the running mate of the APC governor-elect of Bayelsa State, David Lyon, after winning November 2019 election was another pointer to how parties have been negligent in conducting credible background checks on the certificates presented by their candidates.
On the eve of their inauguration, the Supreme Court ruled that the deputy governor-elect presented fake certificates and ordered INEC to withdraw the certificate of return issued to Lyon and re-issue another to the candidate with the second highest votes.
Also, the tenure of Christian Abah as a member of the House of Representatives representing Ado/Okpokwu/Ogbadigbo Federal Constituency in Benue State was cut short in 2017 when the Supreme Court ruled that he presented fake Ordinary National Diploma (OND) certificate from Federal Polytechnic, Mubi, Adamawa State.
However, the alleged certificate forgery against former President Muhammadu Buhari attracted international attention because he was said to have presented fake West African Examination Council (WAEC) certificates to INEC.
The opposition alleged that Buhari did not complete his secondary school education before joining the Nigerian Army, and challenged the authenticity of the WAEC certificate he presented to the INEC.
Although Buhari encountered no challenge in getting APC screening committee to accept the contentious certificate, the former president was later let off the hook when WAEC issued an “attestation certificate” confirming that he obtained a secondary school certificate from the examination body in 1961.
Former National Commissioner of INEC, Prof. Lai Olurode, said it is way beyond the remit of the electoral body to check the authenticity of the documents submitted to it by candidates, noting that in the last election, over “3,122 candidates contested for House of Representatives, over 1,101 for Senate, 10,231for House of Assemblies, 837 for governorship and 18 for the presidency.”
The Professor of Sociology said: “I think there was nothing that ought to have been done by INEC or the political parties that had not been done in the instant case. What one might recommend is a situation where INEC publishes the list of candidates that are contesting elections much well ahead of the date of the election.
“What can be done is for any person who thinks that a candidate is not fit to stand for election, to seek further investigation or probe into the credentials of those particular candidates. Other than that, it is almost impossible for INEC to begin to go to the primary schools, secondary and all institutions attended by all the candidates in the expectation that some fraudulent cases would have been discovered. That would make it a Herculean challenge.
“It is not even accomplishable from the look of things. There’s no way that can be properly done. But I think so far, since 1999 we have not had too many controversial issues. I don’t think there’s any loophole in our electoral act or practice of democracy that warrants any major amendment.”
A Public Affairs analyst and former Commissioner of Finance in Ogun State, Mr Kehinde Sogunle, blamed the political parties for failing in performing their responsibilities because the law empowers parties to scrutinise the credentials of all their aspirants before emerging as candidates.
He regretted that “political parties in Nigeria have lost their integrity and discipline,” to the extent that people of dubious character with a heavy war chest passed through their screening committees with fake school results and NYSC certificates.
He said: “Political parties should be seen as banks that do background checks of documents presented by their customers before completing the process of opening accounts for them. And any bank that failed to do it will be flagged and sanctioned by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
“If parties that screened and presented a candidate with fake certificates are sanctioned by either suspending the party from presenting candidates for a number of years or the chairman of the screening committee that affirmed fake certificates is jailed, there will be changes.
“Political parties should not be a congregation of hooligans, it is a corporate body. INEC should have a department to check political behaviours and sanction parties. But as it is now, the law does not allow INEC to sanction parties or do background checks on credentials submitted by candidates. If the PDP had been sanctioned in 2000 for presenting Salisu Buhari, things would have been better by now.”
Another analyst, Kola Ogunleye told The Guardian that while it will become an extra burden on INEC to be saddled with the responsibility of checking the originality of documents submitted by party candidates, he however, called on stakeholder to review the Electoral Act (2022) after Supreme Court might have dispensed with all cases in court, noting that there are many inherent flaws in the Electoral Act.
Ogunleye, who said Nigerians should not contemplate holding 2027 general elections with the subsisting electoral act, said the pronouncements from the courts have clearly shown that the country is yet to get electoral laws that will usher in credible, free and fair election.
He said: “What kind of law will not allow an institution to fact check documents submitted to it by politicians who are desperate to win the election? The political culture in Nigeria has not developed enough to think we have saints contesting elections. We need to put a structure in place to confirm documents submitted by politicians to avoid future embarrassment.”
But Yinka Okedara, a lawyer, reiterated that the Electoral Act does not permit INEC to query any documents of the candidates submitted by the parties.
He said the position of the law only allows INEC to display documents of the candidates, place adverts to alert the public and only aspirants can raise objections to any of the documents and approach the court to take decision on it.
He said: “It is only the court that can declare the documents as fake and disqualify the candidate. The power belongs to the people to do the background checks and raise the alarm. It is a pre-election matter.”
Spokesperson to the national chairman of INEC, Mr Rotimi Oyekanmi declined comments, saying that the electoral body has decided not to speak on any issue relating to 2023 general elections until all the pending matters are resolved in court.
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