The choice of former Aviation Minister Stella Oduah to run for a Senate seat in the 2027 general election has raised concerns among some All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) leaders.
The leaders, acting on behalf of Concerned Anambra North Stakeholders (CANS), based their concerns on purported certificate anomalies and an alleged N2.5 billion fraud case that was recently resolved at a Federal Capital Territory (FCT) High Court.
Regarding the fraud allegations, the leaders contend that the recent court case that resulted in Justice Hamza Muazu of the FCT High Court winding up her two companies and forfeiting roughly N2 billion to the Federal Government of Nigeria in a plea bargain arrangement, along with the purported unresolved inconsistencies in her academic records, raise red flags for APGA to risk giving its platform to her.
Recall that on March 26, in accordance with a plea bargain agreement, Justice Muazu found Oduah’s two companies, Sobora International Limited and Global Offshore and Marine Limited, guilty after she entered a guilty plea on their behalf. She also issued an order winding them up and mandated that the N780 million recovered during the investigation and the N1.2 billion paid as restitution be forfeited to the federal government.
Additionally, the leaders claimed that the former minister violated Sections 66(1)(i) and 315(5)(a) of the Nigerian Constitution by making “false statements” in documents she submitted under oath to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for the general elections in 2015, 2019, and 2023.
Since 2015, Oduah has allegedly made conflicting statements regarding her credentials, credentials, and academic records, which she has allegedly neglected to correct.
They petitioned Professor Charles Soludo, the governor of Anambra State, asking him to use his position as the APGA’s national leader to persuade the party’s leadership not to give Oduah the ticket for the Anambra North senatorial district due to purportedly unresolved concerns regarding her credibility.
In the May 4 petition, which was signed by Sylvester Nnalue and Emmanuel Uduaka, CANS stated that it wanted to convince APGA not to make the mistake of giving the former minister its platform and to keep her from running in the party’s next Anambra North senatorial district primary election because of the potential harm to the party.
According to CANS, it is requesting that Soludo be made aware of “the discrepancies and outright concealment in the documents and credentials presented by Senator Stella Adaeze Oduah to Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) under oath in her previous INEC Forms C.F.001/Affidavit in support of personal particulars of persons seeking election to the office/membership of senate for the 2015, 2019, and 2023 general elections.
“Those forms, together with the fraudulent information they contain, are already in the public domain and have legally become public papers. They cannot be retracted and will always be used against her.
We implore Your Excellency to grant Senator Oduah stringent documentation supporting all of her assertions regarding her primary school attendance and certificate.
Contrary to her statements in the aforementioned documents that she submitted to INEC, the police, and the courts, we firmly think that she never took and passed any primary school leaving exam and was never granted a First School Leaving Certificate. This will result in legal action and expose the party to the Electoral Act’s Section 29(5)(6).43
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