President Bola Tinubu has written 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, President Tinubu nominated former senator Magnus Abe as chairman of the NUPRC board. Abe, who represented Rivers South-East Senatorial District for two terms, previously served on the board of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and is currently the chairman of the National Agency for the Great Green Wall.
According to a statement issued on Monday by the Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, the President also nominated Engineer Paul Yaro Jezhi, a former chairman of the Trade Union Congress in Kaduna State, and Sunday Adebayo Babalola, a former deputy director at the defunct Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), as non-executive commissioners on the NUPRC board.
Tinubu further nominated seven executive commissioners for the commission. 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), Mahmood Tijani (Health, Safety and Environment), and 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 nominees.
In a separate letter, the President nominated Adegbite Ebiowei Adeniji, a legal practitioner with more than 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 until 2018 and was part of the World Bank Oil and Gas Policy team that advised Nigeria on petroleum sector reforms, including the Strategic Gas Plan. He is currently the managing partner of ENR Advisory.
Also nominated as non-executive members of the NMDPRA board are Chief Kenneth Kobani, a former Minister of State for Trade and ex-Secretary to the Rivers State Government, and Asabe Ahmed.
Other nominees 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).
While Adama was appointed by President Tinubu in 2024, Lamorde and Adeniji were appointed by the late President Buhari in 2021, and Ogaree in 2022.
Additional members proposed for the NMDPRA board are 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 ExxonMobil’s Nigerian subsidiaries.
President Tinubu urged the Senate to expedite action on the confirmations, noting that the requests followed the recent appointment of chief executive officers for both regulatory agencies.
The Senate has already confirmed Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan as Chief Executive Officer of the NUPRC and Engineer Saidu Aliyu Mohammed as Chief Executive Officer of the NMDPRA.
The President charged all appointees and nominees to carry out their responsibilities professionally in regulating Nigeria’s oil and gas sector.
