2027: Verify candidates’ certificates before polls – Peter Obi to INEC

Former Labour Party Presidential candidate in the 2023 general elections, Peter Obi, has urged the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to verify certificates submitted by candidates running for public office to prevent people with questionable backgrounds from being elected.

Obi made this call in a post on his verified X handle on Monday.

He recalled that many public office holders today are parading forged certificates backed by fraudulent affidavits, which they used in 2023, after “scaling through” both INEC, security and Senate screening with forged documents.

The former Anambra State governor stressed the danger of making crime a norm, saying he usually gets attacked and blackmailed by those who are part of the criminality, whenever he talks about Nigeria being a crime scene.

“But how do you tell people that those whose integrity, character and behaviour are supposed to be exemplary and emulated in society have become the very source of the nation’s decay?

“How do you tell young Nigerians to be honest and upright when those they are supposed to emulate are the least to be emulated because they are criminals and dishonest?

“INEC, even after the elections, does not bother to revisit or investigate these serious offences before the next election,” he wrote.