It was a disconsolate day in court, Tuesday, September 20th, for the Pastor Umo Eno legal team at the resumed hearing of the certificate forgery case between Akan Okon vs Umo Eno in suit No. FHC/UY/110/2022, when Mr. Christopher Enderly, a Chief Superintendent of Police and star police witness for the second defendant and the governorship candidate for the People Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2023 governorship election in Akwa Ibom State, was cross-examined by the lead counsel of Mr. Akan Okon, Mr. Okey Ameachi (SAN).
Mr. Enderly was nervous and confused inside the witness box, hence caved into the strenuous and demanding questions put to him by the plaintiff’s counsel and eventually destroyed the evidence he had tendered in court before the cross-examination.
In a brief parley with journalists shortly after the court sitting at the court premises, the lead counsel to the Plaintiff, Mr. Ameachi (SAN) told reporters that they were able to establish that the Police witness for the Umo Eno fabricated all the documents he tendered before the court.
According to him the certainty of his culpability was confirmed when he acknowledged receiving a petition written on August 8th, on the 5th of August from the West Africa Examination Council (WAEC) to investigate the genuineness of the letter written by WAEC to the Association for the Advancement of a Democracy in Nigeria (AADN) affirming that Pastor Umo Eno’s 1983 external Nov/Dec result does not exist in WAEC records, even before the petition was written on August 8th to the Akwa Ibom State Police Commissioner.
Amaechi said that the culpability of the Police officer was deep to the extent that “even the photocopy of the certified true copy of the WAEC certificate tendered in court, was certified by WAEC even before the Commissioner of Police in Akwa Ibom state minuted that the police witness should undertake the investigation” giving rise to the fact that the evidence produced by the police witness was stage-managed.
According to Amaechi, Akan Okon has laid all the foundation to show that the police witness fabricated all documents he tendered in court as evidenced in the obvious inconsistencies in his testimonies during cross-examination.
“We asked him whether he met the Zonal Coordinator of the WAEC at the Ikeja office, he told us that he met with the Zonal Coordinator and interacted with him extensively during the investigation but that he doesn’t know the name of the zonal Coordinator”, Ameachi said.
The plaintiff’s lead lawyer insisted that all the evidence presented in court by the police CSP was fabricated by him to help his bosom friend and benefactor Pastor Umo Eno to wriggle out of the certificate forgery entanglement from which he has been struggling hard to extricate himself.
When asked if he had met Pastor Umo Eno in person, he first denied that he has never met him but later conceded that he met him at the police headquarters in Uyo when he came to submit his petition, a few days before he traveled to Lagos on the 28th and 29th of July 2022 to investigate the letter from AADN – almost three weeks before the initial petition was sent to the Commissioner of Police on August 8th, 2022.
Mr. Akan Okon’s lead counsel said, “If he had investigated the matter he would have tendered the report of the investigation to the Commissioner of Police but from the consistencies recorded during the cross-examination, it was also established that the police witness was meddling with a case that doesn’t concern him including the authentication of the 1983 Nov/Dec, GCE result belonging to Pastor Umo Eno which was not part of the brief of his investigation.
The police witness also told the court that even though he was aware of the WAEC guideline about the investigation or the authentication of certificates issued by the exams council, he didn’t follow the stipulated guideline as required by the exams body.
The Police CSP during cross-examination told the court that he was not satisfied with the response letter from WAEC after his investigation leading the plaintiff’s counsel to ask him how he concluded that the letter from AADN was forged.
When pressed further to provide the exact date he met with Pastor Umo Eno, Mr. Enderly said, “l can’t remember the exact date, but it’s on my case file, I don’t know the day he made the statement, but I left Akwa Ibom on the 28th and submitted the letter on the 29th to WAEC office in Ogba Ikeja.”
With the proof at hand, Amaechi, Akan Okon’s counsel reminded the police witness that he was the person that procured all the documents tendered in court as they were all signed on the same day, August 5th, 2022.
The police CSP further entangled himself by telling the court that he was not aware of the purpose for which the letter from WAEC disassociating itself from Eno’s 1983 Nov/Dec was written to the Commissioner of Police, but he went ahead to investigate the document he knew nothing about. “I don’t know the purpose for which the letter was written but I went ahead to investigate the matter,” he said.
The matter has been adjourned to October 14, 2022, for the adoption of final addresses.
