Breaking: Tinubu Overhauls Oil & Gas Leadership, Appoints New NUPRC, NMDPRA Board Chairmen

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has forwarded two separate letters to the Senate, requesting confirmation of 21 nominees for the boards of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) and the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA).....KINDLY READ THE FULL STORY HERE▶

This was disclosed on Monday in a statement issued by the President’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga.

In the first letter, Tinubu nominated former Senator Magnus Abe as Chairman of the NUPRC board. Abe, who represented Rivers South-East in the Senate for two terms, previously served on the board of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and is currently Chairman of the National Agency for the Great Green Wall.

Also nominated as non-executive commissioners on the NUPRC board are Engineer Paul Yaro Jezhi, a former chairman of the Trade Union Congress in Kaduna State, and Mr Sunday Adebayo Babalola, a former deputy director at the defunct Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), which was dissolved following the enactment of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) in 2021.

The President further nominated several executive commissioners for the NUPRC board. They include Muhammed Sabo Lamido (Finance), Edu Inyang (Exploration and Acreage), Justin Ezeala (Economic Regulation and Strategic Planning), Henry Darlington Oki (Development and Production), Indabawa Bashari Alka (Corporate Services and Administration), Mahmood Tijani (Health, Safety and Environment), and Ms Olayemi Adeboyejo as Secretary and Legal Adviser.

Lamido and Adeboyejo were initially appointed by former President Muhammadu Buhari in 2022, while Alka was appointed by President Tinubu in 2023. Inyang, Ezeala, Tijani, Babalola and Jezhi are new appointees of the Tinubu administration.

In a second letter to the Senate, President Tinubu nominated Mr Adegbite Ebiowei Adeniji, a legal practitioner with over three decades of experience in energy and natural resources, as Chairman of the NMDPRA board. Adeniji previously served as Special Technical Adviser to the Minister of State for Petroleum on upstream and gas matters and was part of the World Bank Oil and Gas Policy team that advised Nigeria on petroleum sector reforms. He is currently the Managing Partner at ENR Advisory.

Also nominated as non-executive board members of NMDPRA are Chief Kenneth Kobani, a former Minister of State for Trade and former Secretary to the Rivers State Government, and Mrs Asabe Ahmed.

Other nominees for the NMDPRA board include Abiodun Adeniji (Executive Director, Finance), Francis Ogaree (Executive Director, Hydrocarbon), Oluwole Adama (Executive Director, Midstream and Downstream Gas Infrastructure), and Dr Mustapha Lamorde (Executive Director, Corporate Services and Administration). Adama was appointed in 2024 by President Tinubu, while Lamorde and Adeniji were appointed by former President Buhari in 2021, and Ogaree in 2022.

Additional nominees are Mr Yahaya Nasamu Yinusa (Executive Director, Distribution Systems), Adeyemi Murtala Aminu (Executive Director, Corporate Services), Ms Modie Ogechukwu (Executive Director, Economic Regulation and Strategic Planning), and Barrister Olawale Dawodu as Board Secretary and Legal Adviser. Dawodu is an experienced industry professional and former Financial Reporting Manager at Exxon Nigerian subsidiaries.

President Tinubu urged the Senate to consider and approve the nominations without delay.

The requests follow the recent confirmation by the Senate of Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan as Chief Executive Officer of NUPRC and Engineer Saidu Aliyu Mohammed as CEO of NMDPRA.

The President has tasked all appointees and nominees to carry out their responsibilities with professionalism and integrity in regulating Nigeria’s oil and gas sector.