UPDATED: Certificate Forgery: Embattled Minister Uche Nnaji resigns after PREMIUM TIMES’ investigation

The Minister of Innovation, Science, and Technology, Uche Nnaji, has resigned three days after he was exposed by PREMIUM TIMES for forging two certificates.

Bayo Onanuga, the spokesperson to President Bola Tinubu, confirmed the minister’s resignation in a post on his X handle on Tuesday.

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“President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has accepted the resignation of Geoffrey Uche Nnaji, the Minister of Innovation, Science, and Technology, following some allegations against him,” Mr Onanuga wrote on the microblogging platform, referring to the newspaper’s investigation.

The presidential spokesperson said the minister resigned on Tuesday and thanked Mr Tinubu for allowing him to serve Nigeria.

“President Tinubu thanked him for his service and wished him well in future endeavours,” he said.

What we found in our investigation

A painstaking two-year investigation published by PREMIUM TIMES on Saturday revealed that Mr Nnaji forged the credentials he submitted to President Tinubu and the Nigerian Senate during his ministerial confirmation in 2023.

The report specifically exposed how the minister forged his degree and NYSC certificates.

Allegations of certificate forgery have dogged Mr Nnaji since July 2023, when President Tinubu named him among the first batch of 28 ministerial nominees from 25 states forwarded to the Senate as part of the president’s initial cabinet list, two months after taking office on 29 May 2023.

Critics have long insisted that Mr Nnaji did not complete his university education and that both the bachelor’s degree and NYSC certificate he presented to President Tinubu, as well as to the offices of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, the State Security Service, and the Senate, were forged.

The findings of PREMIUM TIMES’ extensive examination of the documents were damning and conclusive: both the degree certificate and the NYSC discharge certificate in the minister’s possession are outright forgeries.

This newspaper reported on Sunday that the then-minister had admitted that the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), never issued him a degree certificate.

Many Nigerians have expressed outrage over the then-minister’s certificate forgery.

On Monday, Mr Nnaji was absent from a press conference his office called to address the matter. His aides, however, appeared on his behalf during which they made unsubstantiated claims, including the claim that the then-minister indeed graduated from UNN.

PREMIUM TIMES later published documents showing that at the time Mr Nnaji claimed to have graduated from UNN and purportedly proceeded to participate in the mandatory national youth service, he was still exchanging correspondence with the institution on how he could re-sit a failed terminal course examination.

Meanwhile, both the authorities of the UNN and the NYSC have separately disowned Mr Nnaji’s certificates in response to PREMIUM TIMES’ Freedom of Information request submitted to the institutions at different times.

READ ALSO: Again, UNN disowns Minister Uche Nnaji’s certificate in fresh letter to Premium Times

Uche Nnaji at a glance

Mr Nnaji was appointed Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology by President Tinubu on 16 August 2023.

Before then, he was the 2023 governorship candidate in Enugu State under the platform of the All Progressives Congress, but lost to then-PDP candidate, Peter Mbah, now governor of the state.

The former minister hails from Akpogu, a community in Nkanu West Local Government Area of Enugu State, Nigeria’s South-east.