The Enugu State Stakeholders Forum (ESSF) has asked the state House of Assembly to immediately set in motion the machinery for the impeachment of Governor Peter Mbah who assumed office only last May 29.
“The Enugu people cannot wait for a whole six months for the Enugu State Governorship Election Petitions Tribunal to finish its work and remove Mbah for being an electoral usurper”, the ESSF declared today in a statement entitled “The Ongoing Humiliation of Enugu State” and signed by its president, Professor Joe Aneke, and its secretary, Dr Ifeanyi Agbo.
“We have wasted enough time expecting him to resign as advised by the Southeast zone of the Network of Evangelical Bishops of Nigeria (NEBN)”.
The ESSF added: “Our state has enjoyed no peace since Mbah found his way to the governorship of the state, and we cannot wait to see him go.
“Since he was imposed on us as the de facto governor, there has been at least one politically motivated killing every three days, an unprecedented development in the hitherto most peaceful state in the Southeast”.
The stakeholders alleged that the governor is making Enugu increasingly ungovernable through both incompetence and a lack of legitimacy.
“Worse, Mbah has been humiliating Enugu, the Southeast capital, in a way no one ever considered possible”, they claimed, citing proceedings at the ongoing Enugu State Governorship Election Petitions Tribunal where things have apparently not been going well for the governor.
They recalled how the governor and his team “are being humiliated daily at the tribunal where the Labour Party is challenging his victory in the March 18 gubernatorial election because it is self-evident he forged his National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) discharge certificate A808297”.
The governor’s Chief of Staff, Barrister Victor Ude, was cross-examined yesterday at the tribunal by Chief Adegboyega Awomolo, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria and lead counsel to Jonathan Chijioke Edeoga, the Labour Party governorship candidate, in what observers consider a most embarrassing development for Mbah.
Udeh, who claims that Mbah did his one-year service in his law firm in Lagos from May 2003 to September 2003, was made to read documents showing that Mbah was actually the Chief of Staff to the then governor, Senator Chimaraoke Nnamani, during this period.
The documents included Mbah’s appointment letter as Chief of Staff and charges of corruption against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in 2007 in his capacity as the Chief of Staff during this period..
The previous day, one of Mbah’s witnesses, one Isa Isa Mohammed, who claimed to be the Deputy Director of Operations at the Department of State Security (DSS), could not produce any document or evidence that he is from the service.
“This fellow claimed to have investigated the NYSC and discovered that Mbah’s so-called NYSC discharge certificate is genuine, yet he could not produce anything showing he was given the assignment or how he arrived at his so-called finding”, the Enugu stakeholders noted.
INEC, which declared Mbah the winner of the gubernatorial vote, could not produce even one witness for the two days it was allowed to defend its declaration.
Attributing the increased violent killings in the state to the governor’s lack of legitimacy and personal incompetence, the stakeholders faulted the governor for not providing security men on the streets before declaring war on Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) militants who enforce the Monday sit-at-home order by the non-state actors.
“Rather than wait to appoint commissioners to assist in providing order”, said the ESSF, “Mbah elected to make his personal bodyguard, one Vincent Onyeabor his Special Assistant on Security and the highest political appointee to oversee the state’s security in these trying times.
“The result is the comatose condition of our beloved state, making it imperative that the House of Assembly impeach Mbah as soon as possible.
“He has refused to heed the advice of Southeastern bishops to resign forthwith and receive a soft landing from the legitimate governor”.
