Sopuruchi Onwuka

President Bola Tinubu has written to the Senate, seeking confirmation of 21 nominees for the boards of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) and the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC).

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The nominations were disclosed on Monday in a statement by the President’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga.

In the first letter, President Tinubu nominated Senator Magnus Abe as chairman of the NUPRC board. Abe, a two-term senator who represented Rivers South-East, is a former board member of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and currently chairs the National Agency for the Great Green Wall.

Other nominees to the NUPRC board include 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). Both were nominated as non-executive commissioners.

The President also nominated several executive commissioners to the NUPRC board. They are 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), and Mahmood Tijani (health, safety and environment). Ms Olayemi Adeboyejo was nominated 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 nominees.

In a second letter to the Senate, President Tinubu nominated Mr Adegbite Ebiowei Adeniji as chairman of the NMDPRA board. Adeniji is a lawyer with more than three decades of experience in energy and natural resources. He 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’s Oil and Gas Policy team that advised Nigeria on petroleum sector reforms. He is currently the managing partner of ENR Advisory.

Other nominees for the NMDPRA board include Chief Kenneth Kobani and Mrs Asabe Ahmed as non-executive members. Kobani is a former Minister of State for Trade and a former Secretary to the Government of Rivers State.

Also nominated are Abiodun Adeniji (executive director, finance), Francis Ogaree (executive director, hydrocarbon processing), Oluwole Adama (executive director, midstream and downstream gas infrastructure), and Dr Mustapha Lamorde (executive director, corporate services and administration). Adama was appointed in 2024, while Adeniji and Lamorde were appointed in 2021 and Ogaree in 2022 by the previous administration.

Additional nominees include 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 industry professional and former financial reporting manager at Exxon’s Nigerian subsidiaries.

President Tinubu urged the Senate to consider and approve the nominations expeditiously. The request follows the recent confirmation of chief executive officers for the two regulatory agencies. The Senate had earlier confirmed Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan as CEO of NUPRC and Engineer Saidu Aliyu Mohammed as CEO of NMDPRA.

The President charged all nominees to discharge their responsibilities professionally in regulating Nigeria’s oil and gas sector.