President Bola Tinubu has nominated Senator Magnus Abe and 20 others for appointment into the boards of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission, NUPRC, and the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority, NMDPRA.
The nominations were conveyed to the Senate in two separate letters seeking legislative confirmation, a statement by the Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Mr Bayo Onanuga, disclosed.
In the first letter, President Tinubu nominated Senator Magnus Abe as Chairman of the Board of the NUPRC.
Abe, a two-term senator who represented Rivers South-East, is a former board member of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, and currently serves as Chairman of the National Agency for the Great Green Wall.
Other nominees for the NUPRC board as non-executive commissioners 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 also nominated several executive commissioners for the NUPRC board. They include:
Muhammed Sabo Lamido, Executive Commissioner, Finance
Mr Edu Inyang, Executive Commissioner, Exploration and Acreage, Justin Ezeala, Executive Commissioner, Economic Regulation and Strategic Planning.
Others are Henry Darlington Oki, Executive Commissioner, Development and Production Indiana Bashari Alka, Executive Commissioner, Corporate Services and Administration
Mahmood Tijani, Executive Commissioner, Health, Safety and Environment.
Also nominated was Ms Olayemi Adeboyejo as Secretary and Legal Adviser to the commission.
While Lamido and Adeboyejo were initially appointed in 2022 by former President Muhammadu Buhari, Alka was appointed by President Tinubu in 2023. Inyang, Ezeala, Tijani, Babalola and Jezhi are new nominees of the President.
In a second letter to the Senate, President Tinubu nominated Mr Adegbite Ebiowei Adeniji, a lawyer, as Chairman of the NMDPRA board.
Adeniji has over three decades of experience in energy and natural resources, having served as Special Technical Adviser to the Minister of State for Petroleum on upstream and gas matters until 2018.
He was also a member of the World Bank Oil and Gas Policy Team that advised Nigeria on petroleum sector reforms and the development of the Strategic Gas Plan.
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 under Nyesom Wike, and Mrs Asabe Ahmed.
Executive directors nominated for confirmation include: Abiodun Adeniji, Executive Director, Finance, Francis Ogaree, Executive Director, Hydrocarbon Processing, Oluwole Adama, Executive Director, Midstream and Downstream Gas Infrastructure, Dr Mustapha Lamorde, Executive Director, Corporate Services and Administration.
Adama was appointed in 2024 by President Tinubu, while Adeniji and Lamorde were appointed in 2021 and Ogaree in 2022 by former President Buhari.
Other members of the proposed NMDPRA board are:
Mr Yahaya Nasamu Yinusa, Executive Director, Distribution Systems
Also nominated was Adeyemi Murtala Aminu as Executive Director, Corporate Services
Ms Modie Ogechukwu, Executive Director, Economic Regulation and Strategic Planning, Barrister Olawale Dawodu was nominated as Board Secretary and Legal Adviser.
Dawodu is an industry professional and formerly served as Financial Reporting Manager at ExxonMobil’s Nigerian subsidiaries.
President Tinubu urged the Senate to consider and approve the nominations expeditiously.
The requests follow the recent confirmation by the Senate of Mrs Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan as Chief Executive Officer of the NUPRC and Engineer Saidu Aliyu Mohammed as Chief Executive Officer of the NMDPRA.
The President has charged all appointees and nominees to discharge their responsibilities with professionalism and diligence in regulating Nigeria’s oil and gas sector.
