President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has nominated 21 board members for Nigeria’s two key oil and gas regulatory agencies—the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) and the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA)—and urged the Senate to confirm them expeditiously, in a move aimed at strengthening governance of the petroleum sector under the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA).
In separate letters to the Senate, President Tinubu named 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 Company (NNPC) and currently chairs the National Agency for the Great Green Wall.
Other nominees for 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 to serve as non-executive commissioners.
The President also nominated seven executive commissioners for the NUPRC board. They are Muhammed Sabo Lamido (Finance), Mr 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.
According to a statement by the President’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, some of the nominees are returning appointees, while others are new. Former President Muhammadu Buhari appointed Lamido and Adeboyejo in 2022, while Tinubu appointed Alka in 2023. Inyang, Ezeala, Tijani, Babalola and Jezhi are new nominees.
In a second letter, President Tinubu nominated Mr Adegbite Ebiowei Adeniji, a lawyer 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 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 of the NMDPRA board are Chief Kenneth Kobani, a former minister of state for trade and former secretary to the Rivers State government, and Mrs Asabe Ahmed.
For executive roles, the President nominated Abiodun Adeniji (Finance), Francis Ogaree (Hydrocarbon), Oluwole Adama (Midstream and Downstream Gas Infrastructure), and Dr Mustapha Lamorde (Corporate Services and Administration). Adama was appointed in 2024, while Adeniji, Lamorde and Ogaree were appointed between 2021 and 2022 under the previous administration.
Other proposed board members include Mr Yahaya Nasamu Yinusa (Distribution Systems), Adeyemi Murtala Aminu (Corporate Services), Ms Modie Ogechukwu (Economic Regulation and Strategic Planning), and Barrister Olawale Dawodu as board secretary and legal adviser. Dawodu is an industry professional and a former financial reporting manager at ExxonMobil’s Nigerian subsidiaries.
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The nominations come shortly after the appointment and Senate confirmation of Mr Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan as Chief Executive Officer of the NUPRC and Engineer Saidu Aliyu Mohammed as CEO of the NMDPRA.
President Tinubu charged all nominees and appointees to discharge their duties professionally and uphold the mandate of the regulatory agencies as the government intensifies reforms in the oil and gas sector.
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