President Bola Tinubu has written two separate letters to the Senate, seeking 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).
In the first letter, the President nominated former senator representing Rivers South East, Magnus Abe, as chairman of the NUPRC board. Abe is a two-term senator, former member of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) board, and current chairman of the National Agency of the Great Green Wall.
According to a statement issued on Monday by the Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, other nominees to the NUPRC board include Engineer Paul Yaro Jezhi, former chairman of the Trade Union Congress in Kaduna State, and Sunday Adebayo Babalola, a former deputy director of the defunct Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR). Both are nominated as non-executive commissioners.
President Tinubu also nominated several executive commissioners for the NUPRC board. They are Muhammed Sabo Lamido (Finance), Edu Inyang (Exploration and Acreage), Justin Ezeala (Economic Regulation and Strategic Planning), and Henry Darlington Oki (Development and Production).
Others include Indabawa Bashari Alka (Corporate Services and Administration), Mahmood Tijani (Health, Safety and Environment), and Olayemi Adeboyejo as Secretary and Legal Adviser.
Lamido and Adeboyejo were first appointed by former President Muhammadu Buhari in 2022, while Alka was appointed by President Tinubu in 2023. Inyang, Ezeala, Tijani, Babalola and Jezhi are fresh nominees of the current administration.
In a second letter to the Senate, President Tinubu nominated Adegbite Ebiowei Adeniji, a lawyer with over 30 years’ experience in the energy sector, as chairman of the NMDPRA board. Adeniji previously served as special technical adviser to the Minister of State for Petroleum 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 members are Chief Kenneth Kobani, a former Minister of State for Trade and former Secretary to the Rivers State Government, and 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 by President Tinubu in 2024, while Adeniji, Lamorde and Ogaree were appointed by former President Buhari between 2021 and 2022.
Additional nominees include Yahaya Nasamu Yinusa (Executive Director, Distribution Systems), Adeyemi Murtala Aminu (Executive Director, Corporate Services), Modie Ogechukwu (Executive Director, Economic Regulation and Strategic Planning), and Barrister Olawale Dawodu as Board Secretary and Legal Adviser. Dawodu is an industry professional and former Financial Reporting Manager at Exxon Nigerian subsidiaries.
President Tinubu urged the Senate to consider and approve the nominations expeditiously, noting that the requests followed the recent confirmation of Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan as Chief Executive Officer of the NUPRC and Engineer Saidu Aliyu Mohammed as CEO of the NMDPRA.
The President charged all nominees to discharge their responsibilities professionally in regulating Nigeria’s oil and gas sector.
