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From Okwe Obi, Abuja
National Chartered Institute of Forensics and Certified Fraud Investigators of Nigeria has announced plans to expose politicians with dubious educational qualifications and prevent them from participating in elections.
Its President and Chairman, Governing Council, Iliyasu Gashinbaki, made this known during a meeting with the leadership of national Inter-Party Advisory Council (IPAC), yesterday, in Abuja.
Gashinbaki said the institute would partner IPAC to help authenticate documents of aspirants even before the primary elections in the 2027 general elections.
“Politics is too important to be left in the hands of politicians. We will engage all political parties, through IPAC to see how we can strengthen the electoral management process.
“We have had several instances where we know that if forensic tools had been deployed, it would have saved the country embarrassment and even the stress the electorate went through.
“A typical case in point is the case of Bayelsa where the election of an elected governor was nullified because of certificate forgery that shouldn’t have happened.
“The person that the masses elected was a different person and the court nullified it.”
We are talking to all the political parties in Nigeria. We have seen the decline of governance in Africa.
“This is the reason for multiple coups across Africa. One of the ways to address impunity is to tackle the recruitment process of people that occupy political offices from the councillor to the president.
“For this reason, we are setting up two laboratories that would be too critical for the 2027 general election to ensure no dubious or forged document of any kind will be submitted by politicians during the elections.
“We have had instances of forged National Youth Service Corps certificates, tax clearance certificates, academic certificates filled in by politicians like in the case of Bayelsa, to stand for elections and this leads the country to embarrassment and the electorate are shortchanged.
“We will work with IPAC to help in authentication of the documents of candidates that would stand elections before the primary elections,” he said.
In his response, IPAC Chairman and National Chairman of Allied People’s Movement (APM), Yusuf Dantalle, lauded the initiative, saying: “One day, I pray we will all agree as Nigerians that we want a better system for all of us.
“As long as we refuse to domesticate the solutions to our problems or refused to identify the foundation of our problems because I think some of these problems are self-inflicted because we know what to do to get out of the mess we are in but somehow, for personal gain, we do not want to.
“This partnership, for me and the council, is a welcome development. It must be encouraged and consolidated,” he said.
