‘Certificate forgery’: Court dismisses NYSC’s objection against Mbah’s N20bn suit

A federal high court in Abuja has dismissed the preliminary objection filed by the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) against the N20 billion suit by Peter Mbah, governor of Enugu.

In a ruling on Friday, Inyang Ekwo, the presiding judge, held that the objection by the NYSC lacked merit.

In February, the management of NYSC issued a letter signed by Ibrahim Muhammad, the scheme’s director of corps certification, saying the discharge certificate being paraded by Mbah was not issued by the corps.

Mbah approached the federal high court with an ex parte application, after which NYSC was restrained from further issuing a disclaimer on the certificate.

The governor then sued NYSC for what he described as conspiracy, deceit, and misrepresentation of facts while demanding N20 billion in compensation.

He also sought a declaration that the scheme and its director for corps certification “conspired by fraudulent design, suppressed, and misrepresented facts” in voiding his certificate of national service. 

However, NYSC filed a preliminary objection praying the court to dismiss the suit for want of jurisdiction.

The corps maintained that Mbah did not appeal to the president as required by the provisions of section 20 of the National Youth Service Corps act, cap N84, laws of the federation of Nigeria, 2004, before instituting the suit.

NYSC argued that an appeal to the president was a condition precedent to instituting an action against the scheme in any court of law in Nigeria.

But Emeka Ozoani, Mbah’s counsel, had argued that section 20 of the NYSC act cited by the defendant’s lawyer, does not apply to his client.

On July 19, TheCable reported that the Department of State Services (DSS) had said that Mbah did not forge his NYSC discharge certificate.

The service said that the failure of the scheme to do “proper record-keeping was the cause of its inability to trace Peter Ndubuisi Mbah’s initial certificate”.