President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has accepted the resignation of Geoffrey Uche Nnaji as the Minister of Innovation, Science, and Technology. The resignation comes amidst a protracted and substantiated scandal over the authenticity of his academic credentials.
The announcement was made in a statement on Tuesday by the President’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga. In his resignation letter, Nnaji expressed gratitude for the opportunity to serve but claimed his decision was influenced by a campaign of blackmail from political opponents.
President Tinubu, in his response, thanked the former minister for his service and wished him well in his future endeavours.
The resignation follows a definitive report from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), which formally disowned the Bachelor of Science degree certificate Nnaji had presented. In response to a Freedom of Information request, the university’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Simon U. Ortuanya, confirmed that while Nnaji was admitted in 1981, there was no record of him completing his studies or graduating.
The scandal, which first emerged in July 2023 when Nnaji was a ministerial nominee, gained new traction when court documents revealed the minister’s own admission. In an affidavit filed before the Federal High Court in Abuja, Nnaji personally acknowledged, in paragraph 13, that he had never been issued a certificate by the university, despite claiming to have completed his programme in 1985.
This admission directly contradicted an earlier letter from the UNN Registrar, Celine Nnebedum, sent to the People’s Gazette in December 2023, which had affirmed Nnaji’s graduation. That letter was later invalidated by the university itself. In a subsequent communication to the Public Complaints Commission in May 2025, Mrs. Nnebedum stated that a search of the university’s 1985 graduation records found no evidence of Nnaji’s name, conclusively disowning the certificate he had paraded.
