John Adams, Minna

The All Progressive Congress (APC) in Niger State has been immersed in a crisis of certificate forgery involving aspirants contesting the forthcoming local government election.

Daily Sun learnt that following complaints from some party faithful, the Department of State Security (DSS), has waded in to help unravel the genuineness of certificates submitted to party and the state independent Electoral Commission by some chairmanship and four councillorship aspirants.

It was learnt that, so far, three of the aspirants have been found to be parading fake certificates.

The discovery has prevented the party from submitting the final list of candidates to the electoral body after the party primaries three weeks ago.

A source at the party said the need to authentic certificates of aspirants came following series of petitions.

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“The party is trying to verify the authenticity of  certificates so we don’t field wrong candidates and find ourselves in a situation where after the election, the opposition party will challenge it in court and claim the mandate.

This is the reason we have not submitted after primaries about three weeks ago. The party does not want to take any chance, so any candidate that is found to have forged his educational certificate will be disqualified.”

In one of the petitions, the chairmanship candidates from Paikoro Local Government Area was alleged to have forced  his grade two certificate.

The petition signed by Hamsun Isah, said the candidate had initially presented a forged SSCE certificate, but when it was discovered, he withdrew it and replaced it with a Grade two certificate which was also forged.

Attempts to get the reaction of the APC Chairman in the state, Jibrin Iman failed as he did not pick calls to his cell phone neither did he respond to text message sent to him.