The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has been instructed to provide its result verification portal back-end server and other IT infrastructure for a thorough forensic investigation.
This directive came from the Lagos State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal in response to a request made by Abdulazeez Adediran, the People's Democratic Party (PDP) governorship candidate. Adediran claimed that Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu had lied under oath by presenting a counterfeit certificate to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in 2019, as reported by The Independent.
According to a statement released to the press on Monday, June 26, an examination of Sanwo-Olu's 2019 Form CF001 revealed that the alleged WAEC result he submitted, indicating he sat for the exams in 1981 at Ijebu Ife Community Grammar School in Ogun State, was deemed invalid by the WAEC result verification portal. The statement read, "While responding to Jandor/PDP petition, Governor Sanwo-Olu did not provide the supposed WAEC certificate to refute Jandor/PDP's claims. However, the All Progressives Congress (APC), as the 4th respondent, submitted a printout from the same WAEC portal, which previously confirmed Sanwo-Olu's claimed WAEC result as non-existent."
Jandor, another petitioner, raised concerns about the authenticity of the sudden appearance and uploading of Sanwo-Olu's WAEC result on the verification portal. Jandor subsequently summoned WAEC to present the alleged 1981 WAEC certificate in court under oath. Last week, the representative from WAEC, who was summoned as a witness, stated, "I am unable to present the duplicate copy of the May/June 1981 G.C.E. 'O' Level certificate of one Sanwo-Olu Babajide Olusola." The witness also clarified that WAEC does not produce duplicate copies or retain them.
The statement further revealed that a check on the WAEC website indicated that if a candidate's certificate is lost, the council issues an attestation in the form of a Certified True Copy (CTC).
However, no such attestation had been issued by WAEC to confirm Babajide Sanwo-Olu's claim. Therefore, the court ordered WAEC to surrender its back-end server and other IT infrastructure for forensic analysis. This analysis aims to determine the exact date and time when Sanwo-Olu's alleged 1981 WAEC result was uploaded, as it was not present on April 7th, 2023, when Jandor/PDP filed their petition with the tribunal.
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