NOT SURE I UNDERSTAND PETER MBAH’S LAWYERS’ STRATEGY: CONFUSION “GADMA”

By Vitus Ozoke

I think Peter Mbah should fire his legal team immediately. They have shown consistently that this case is way over their heads. NYSC testified against your client in court with ironclad evidence that the discharge certificate your client filed with INEC was a forged document. This was after much effort by you to bar NYSC from coming to court to testify in the first place, which was your first strategy.

Now that the tribunal has rejected your prayer and allowed NYSC to come to court to give evidence, as it should, your legal strategy has changed to tendering a CTC (certified true copy) of the same forged discharge certificate, which you fought hard to prevent NYSC from coming to court to testify to. Which one is it? If you truly believe your CTC story, why didn’t you lead with it? Why did you fight to bar NYSC from coming to court to testify in the first place? What exactly is your strategy?

My fear for Mbah is that his lawyers might be worsening his situation. I hope we are not now looking at two acts of forgery here. NYSC accuses you of forging an original (parent) document and your response is to tender a CTC of the same forged document. 

Analogically, you are like a woman who continues to insist that a man is the father of her child even though the paternity test comes back negative. The answer to a failed (negative) paternity test (via DNA) is not to say that the child’s nose looks like the man’s. That’s not a valid rebuttal to scientific DNA evidence. But that’s what Peter Mbah, through his lawyers, is doing with his CTC argument, except that the CTC argument is even more bizarre. 

With the mother in the failed paternity test and identical nose argument strategy, nobody realistically suspects that the desperate mother surgically altered the 12-month baby’s nose. But what will stop any reasonable person from suspecting that a CTC of a forged document is forgeable and, therefore, forged? NYSC, at its topmost level, the Director General, has stated, quite unequivocally, that the certificate you filed with INEC was not issued by NYSC. What you should do is to fight the charge of forgery head on. Challenge the factual and forensic basis of NYSC’s disclaimer. 

Do whatever you need to do, but do not tender an easily forgeable CTC of an allegedly forged discharge certificate. If NYSC’s case is that you forged the original (parent) document, tendering a CTC of the same document, which you can easily accomplish with a mere stamping on the controversial discharge certificate, is not a solution. It raises even more suspicion.