Sources familiar with the matter told PREMIUM TIMES that the aide would be made to appear before police investigators again at a later date in what insiders say would be part of final preparations to charge him in court.
The police in Enugu State have grilled Chukwunonye Okereke, a media consultant to a former Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology, Uche Nnaji, for alleged criminal defamation of a former Acting Vice-Chancellor of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), Oguejiofo Ujam.
PREMIUM TIMES reliably gathered that Mr Okereke faced police investigators who interrogated him for hours on Monday for claiming that Mr Ujam, a professor, colluded with the then-PDP-led Enugu State Government to declare that Mr Nnaji forged his UNN degree certificate.
Mr Okereke was interrogated by police investigators at the State Criminal Investigation Department (SCID) of the police in Enugu State.
This newspaper learnt that his interrogation was in response to a petition submitted to the police by Mr Ujam.
PREMIUM TIMES obtained a copy of the petition on Monday which was dated 19 May 2026 and acknowledged the following day.
In the petition, addressed to the Commissioner of Police in Enugu State Bitrus Giwa, Mr Ujam alleged that Mr Okereke “criminally defamed” his person on 7 October 2025 while the media consultant was defending Mr Nnaji’s certificate forgery scandal on Channels TV’s Politics Today.
Recall that Mr Okereke had appeared at the TV show to defend Mr Nnaji after a painstaking two-year investigation published by PREMIUM TIMES in October last year revealed that the then-minister forged his UNN degree and NYSC certificates which he submitted to President Bola Tinubu and the Nigerian Senate during his ministerial confirmation in 2023.
Mr Ujam, who served as UNN’s vice-chancellor from February to August 2025, had left the position at the time of the TV programme.
Simon Ortuanya, a professor, who was appointed in August 2025, has been serving as the institution’s vice-chancellor.
For context, Governor Peter Mbah of Enugu State was in the PDP at the time under which he won the 18 March 2023 governorship election in the South-eastern state.
Mr Nnaji was a member of the All Progressives Congress (APC) under which he unsuccessfully contested in the governorship election.
Both Messrs Mbah and Nnaji had been political opponents.
While the governor defected from the PDP to the APC in October 2025, the former minister recently and “quietly” moved to the PDP faction backed by Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike.
The politician, in May this year, emerged as the 2027 governorship candidate for the faction of the party.
In the TV programme which was monitored by this newspaper, Mr Okereke claimed that Mr Nnaji’s certificate forgery scandal was politically motivated.
He suggested that Governor Mbah was responsible for the then-minister’s forgery scandal.
The media consultant specifically said that UNN was “an arm of the PDP” and that Mr Ujam was the former chairman of the party in UNN while Mr Ortuanya was the current chairman of the “PDP arm” of the institution.
He suggested that both Messrs Ujam and Ortuanya colluded to disown and label the then-minister’s UNN degree certificate in his possession as forged.
Channels TV published a video clip of the programme on its verified YouTube channel on 7 October 2027.
In the video clip, Mr Okereke said, “We have the PDP chapter of the University of Nigeria Nsukka, where the former chairman (of the PDP) was a former Acting Vice-Chancellor (of UNN), Prof Ujam and the present Chairman of the PDP chapter (in UNN) is the politically anointed Vice-Chancellor, Prof Simon Ortuanya.”
The media consultant further claimed that Mr Ujam served as the “returning officer for PDP” in Nkanu East Local Government Area during the 2023 governorship election and that “he was compensated with the acting vice-chancellorship position.”
Meanwhile, checks by PREMIUM TIMES showed that political parties in Nigeria, including the PDP, are not allowed to have any official designated as “returning officer” in any election in the country.
It is only the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) that usually deploys “returning officers” in various local government areas.
The returning officers are also called collation officers.
Political parties are only allowed to have one representative known as “party agents” in each of the polling units during any election.
Findings by this newspaper further showed that a Computer Science lecturer from UNN, Ogbene Nnaemeka, was the returning officer for the Nkanu East Local Government Area at the time of the governorship poll.
Mr Ujam said in the petition that he was appointed acting UNN vice-chancellor “on merit” by President Tinubu through the Minister of Education, Tunji Alausa, and that the topic under discussion at Channels TV’s programme had nothing to do with him, having exited office at the time.
“The discourse had nothing to do with me as the erstwhile acting vice-chancellor, but Hon. Chukwunonye Okereke deliberately used the opportunity to drag my name into the discourse just to damage my reputation, impugning my integrity and bringing me into public odium and opprobrium,” he said.
He stressed that President Tinubu who appointed him as the UNN acting vice-chancellor had been a member of the APC, but Mr Okereke accused him of working as a PDP returning officer during the 2023 gubernatorial poll in Nkanu East LGA.
“Hon. Chukwunonye Okereke knew this fact very well and the fact that I was never a returning officer for PDP in Nkanu East Local Government Area of Enugu State, but he chose to injure my reputation and expose me to public hatred, contempt, ridicule and damage my professional image through the media.
