President Bola Tinubu has formally requested the Senate’s 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).
The requests were conveyed in two separate letters read on the floor of the Senate. In the first, the President nominated former senator Magnus Abe as chairman of the NUPRC board. Abe, who represented Rivers South-East in the National Assembly for two terms, previously served on the board of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and is currently chairman of the National Agency for the Great Green Wall.
According to a statement issued on Monday by the President’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, two other nominees were proposed as non-executive commissioners for the NUPRC board. They are 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.
The President also forwarded the names of executive commissioners for the commission. They include Muhammed Sabo Lamido for finance; Edu Inyang for exploration and acreage; Justin Ezeala for economic regulation and strategic planning; and Henry Darlington Oki for development and production. Others are Indabawa Bashari Alka for corporate services and administration; Mahmood Tijani for health, safety and environment; and Olayemi Adeboyejo as secretary and legal adviser.
While Lamido and Adeboyejo were initially appointed in 2022 under the previous administration, and Alka in 2023, several of the nominees, including Inyang, Ezeala, Tijani, Babalola and Jezhi, are fresh appointees under President Tinubu.
In the second letter, the President nominated Adegbite Ebiowei Adeniji as chairman of the NMDPRA board. Adeniji is a lawyer with over three decades of experience in energy and natural resources, having previously served as a special technical adviser on upstream and gas matters and as part of the World Bank’s oil and gas policy advisory team to Nigeria. 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 Asabe Ahmed.
Other nominees include Abiodun Adeniji as executive director of finance; Francis Ogaree as executive director of hydrocarbon processing; Oluwole Adama as executive director of midstream and downstream gas infrastructure; and Dr Mustapha Lamorde as executive director of corporate services and administration. Additional board members proposed are Yahaya Nasamu Yinusa, Adeyemi Murtala Aminu, Modie Ogechukwu and Barrister Olawale Dawodu, who is to serve as board secretary and legal adviser.
President Tinubu urged the Senate to give prompt consideration to the nominations, noting that the requests followed the recent confirmation of Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan as chief executive officer of the NUPRC and Engineer Saidu Aliyu Mohammed as chief executive officer of the NMDPRA.
He charged all nominees and appointees to carry out their responsibilities with professionalism in regulating the nation’s oil and gas industry.
