One Abuja-based lawyer has asked the Inspector-General of Police to open a discreet investigation into the National Youth Service Corps discharge certificate that Enugu State Governor Peter Mbah submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission for the 2023 governorship election. The petition, dated 20 October 2026, was filed by Ejikeme Ignatius Ugwu of Ejike Ugwu & Associates on behalf of Chief Obodoeze Chukwuma Ocho, the African Democratic Congress candidate for the Enugu governorship seat in the February 2027 election.
It names Certificate No. LA/FRN/01/808297, also cited as A808297, dated 6 January 2003. The petition rests on three documents: a Freedom of Information request sent to the NYSC Director-General by Omas & Partners on 23 November 2022; the corps’ reply of 1 February 2023, signed by its director of certification, Ibrahim A. Muhammad, stating that the certificate was not issued by it; and a television interview in which the then director-general, Brigadier General Yusha’u Ahmed, said on 19 May 2023 that the certificate Mbah had paraded was fake.
Ugwu accepted that Section 308 of the 1999 Constitution shields a sitting governor from prosecution, but cited Chief Gani Fawehinmi v Inspector-General of Police to argue that immunity does not bar an investigation. He asked the IGP to identify those responsible and hold them accountable, warning that if the matter goes uninvestigated, “the young generation may think that forgery of certificate is a gateway to be elected into public offices”.
The corps’ position did not survive the courts. On 6 November 2023, Justice Inyang Ekwo of the Federal High Court, Abuja, hearing Mbah’s N20 billion suit, held that the certificate was authentic and validly issued, described the NYSC as mischievous for denying it, and fined the corps N5 million for misrepresenting material facts. The election petition tribunal dismissed the forgery allegation, the petitioner having failed to produce the original and the forged document, and held that an NYSC certificate is not a constitutional qualification for governor. The Court of Appeal and then the Supreme Court upheld Mbah’s election, the Supreme Court dismissing the allegation in December 2023.
The Department of State Security had already cleared him. Testifying at the tribunal in July 2023, the DSS said the corps had mislaid Mbah’s file and opened a temporary one, and could not trace twelve certificates, A808297 to A808308, which included his. Its finding was that the failure of NYSC’s record keeping caused its inability to trace the certificate, and that “it would be wrong for the NYSC to blame Peter Ndubuisi Mbah for his own failure in record keeping”. Mbah’s lawyers petitioned the DSS and the police in February 2023 for the very investigation now being requested.
The petition leans on a video that is three years old. Ahmed’s Arise Television appearance is the statement the petition points to. The officer who made it has since left office. The current director-general, Brigadier General Olakunle Nafiu, told the Education Ministry in September that QR codes on call-up and posting letters had “really reduced the issue of cloning” of corps documents, and in October charged certification officers to remain alert to “certificate forgery and racketeering” as the scheme moves its records to an electronic system. Nafiu was in Enugu on 21 October, where he thanked Mbah for his support for the NYSC permanent orientation camp at Awgu.
Mbah and the Enugu State Government have not responded to the petition. The NYSC and INEC have not commented, and the Inspector-General’s office has not said whether it will act. One question remains open, and it is not the one the petition asks. In October, G27, a support group for Uche Nnaji, asked in writing why Mbah presented a law degree and an NYSC certificate as his highest qualifications with INEC in 2023, and a WAEC result this time. He has not answered that.
The corps was fined N5 million for saying in 2023 that the certificate was not its own. The police are now being asked to look at it again.
