ELECTION: Certificate Forgery Tears Aba Sports Club Apart

– AS PRESIDENT PLANS TO IMPOSE A SUCCESSOR

By Bright Nkem Uwaoma.

In less than two weeks, the members of Aba Sports Club will be at the polls to elect a new President. However, the forthcoming election may plunge the highly respected club into crisis especially if the outgoing President, Chief Jerry Kalu, refuses to back down on his plan to impose his boy, one Greg Okafor, on the club as his successor.

A source within management committee of the club who spoke to us on condition of anonymity revealed that the members are currently gearing up to make a strong statement that Aba Sports Club is not for sale. He further alleged that the outgoing President plot to bend the club rule by bringing in a man who does not possess the minimum educational requirement, which is a Diploma from a tertiary institution, will be vehemently resisted by everyone in the club.

According to him, “It is unfortunate that our outgoing President, Jerry Kalu, wants to destroy Aba Sports Club 1926. We all came here to become members because of the respect and dignity which the club has. But this wicked agenda of trying to impose a man called Greg Okafor on us even when everyone knows that he has no Diploma anywhere in the world is a very big insult to all of us.

“In our revised club rule 2021, the Article 8b is very clear, that to be an officer of the club, you need to have obtained your tertiary Diploma. I can tell you that Greg Okafor does not have that. Let him display his certificate let everyone see. We are now hearing that he is claiming to have obtained a certificate from Abia State Polytechnic.

“We have written strong-worded petitions to the relevant regulatory bodies, including the ICPC, over this claim, because any document he tenders from Abia Polytechnic must have been forged and there must be severe consequences for that. To lead Aba Sports Club, you must be sound in character. Someone who indulges in forgery will be a disaster to lead us, because we are very a respectable club, revered because of the quality of men and women we have. This matter is serious and if our club begins to allow the dirty practices found in Nigerian politics, it means our collapse has come. But God forbid,” he said.

A female member of the club who also declined to have her name in print hinted that another issue that plagues the club going into the election is the reported claim by Greg Okafor, that with his money he has purchased all the women in the club to elect him as President. In her words, “This is the height of insult to our pride and dignity as women. This is disrespectful to our husbands and our marriages. How can someone say he has bought me, a faithful wife of my husband? Am I for sale? Do I look beggarly? Am I a prostitute with easy virtue? Oh my God, I feel like crying!

“How do my fellow women feel when they hear that another man is claiming to have bought them with money? So what this man is saying is that he can also pay us to leave our husbands to follow him? This is not the Aba Sports Club I used to know! The big problem is that any woman who now supports this Greg Okafor is seen as a desperate and unfaithful woman who can do anything dirty for money. My brother, our image is seriously dented right now,” she cried out.

Following the crisis which his alleged certificate forgery and dubious educational history has generated, Eyewitness News launched topnotch investigations into the academic records of Greg Okafor. A few years ago, precisely in 2017, obviously in preparation to become the President of Aba Sports Club, Greg Okafor went and registered for NECO examination at St. Michael’s Comprehensive Secondary School, Aba with the registration number 18632794AC and name: Greg Okwuchukwu Okafor. However, almost all those in that academic set interviewed by our correspondent said they knew nothing about him in person, which indicates he might have written the exams and obtained the NECO certificate through a proxy. He went ahead to secure admission into Abia State Polytechnic in Aba for an evening program in the 2018/2019 academic session in the department of Business Administration and Management with following application number: ABP/NDP/18/0000015285.

However, in the records which he supplied to Abia State Polytechnic, his NECO English Language had been upgraded to C4. Further, in the first semester of his first year, Greg Okafor failed four courses, namely BAM 111, GNS 101, PUS111 and PAD 111/117. In the second semester, he failed another course, which is GNS 131/112, making it a total of five courses currently left uncleared in school. His second year, which is ND 2, has not yet got any results from the Polytechnic.

So, with five failed courses left to be rewritten and entire second year result left unpublished, our investigations can confirm authoritatively that as of today, Greg Okafor has not obtained an authentic tertiary Diploma certificate from Abia State Polytechnic to enable him run for the office of President of Aba Sports Club. Already, an aggrieved alumnus of the Polytechnic who is also a member of the club has hinted us on his plans to drag the matter to the school management and the Federal Ministry of Education.

…CCO