President Bola Tinubu has written two separate letters 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).
In the first letter, the President nominated Senator Magnus Abe to serve as chairman of the NUPRC board.
Abe, who represented Rivers South East Senatorial District for two terms, is a former member of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) board and currently chairs the National Agency of the Great Green Wall.
According to a statement issued on Monday by Bayo Onanuga, special adviser to the President on information and strategy, other nominees for the NUPRC board include 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), abolished by the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) in 2021. Both were nominated as non-executive commissioners.
The President also nominated several executive commissioners to the NUPRC board.
They include Muhammed Sabo Lamido as executive commissioner for finance; Edu Inyang as executive commissioner for exploration and acreage; Justin Ezeala as executive commissioner for economic regulation and strategic planning and Henry Darlington Oki as executive commissioner for development and production.
Others are Indabawa Bashari Alka as executive commissioner for corporate services and administration; Mahmood Tijani as executive commissioner for health, safety and environment and Olayemi Adeboyejo as secretary and legal adviser.
Former President Muhammadu Buhari appointed Lamido and Adeboyejo in 2022, while President Tinubu appointed Alka in 2023. Inyang, Ezeala—the former managing director of Nigerian Gas Marketing Limited—Mahmood Tijani, Babalola and Jezhi are new appointees of the Tinubu administration.
In his second letter to the Senate, President Tinubu nominated Adegbite Ebiowei Adeniji, a lawyer, as chairman of the NMDPRA board.
Adeniji has over 30 years of experience in energy and natural resources and previously 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 Oil and Gas Policy team at the World Bank that advised the Nigerian government on petroleum sector reforms, including the development of the Strategic Gas Plan for Nigeria. He is currently the managing partner at ENR Advisory.
Other nominees to the NMDPRA board include Chief Kenneth Kobani and Asabe Ahmed as non-executive members.
Kobani is a former minister of state for trade under President Goodluck Jonathan and previously served as secretary to the Rivers State government under Nyesom Wike.
Also nominated for confirmation are Abiodun Adeniji as executive director of finance; Francis Ogaree as executive director of hydrocarbon; Oluwole Adama as executive director of midstream and downstream gas infrastructure and Dr Mustapha Lamorde as executive director of corporate services and administration.
President Tinubu appointed Adama in 2024, while former President Buhari appointed Lamorde and Adeniji in 2021 and Ogaree in 2022.
Other proposed members of the NMDPRA board are Yahaya Nasamu Yinusa as executive director of distribution systems; Adeyemi Murtala Aminu as executive director of corporate services; Modie Ogechukwu as executive director of economic regulation and strategic planning; and Barrister Olawale Dawodu as board secretary and legal adviser.
Dawodu is an industry player who previously served as a financial reporting manager at Exxon Nigerian subsidiaries.
The President urged the Senate to consider and approve the nominations expeditiously.
The requests followed the recent appointment of chief executive officers for the two regulatory agencies, with the Senate confirming Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan as CEO of the NUPRC and Engineer Saidu Aliyu Mohammed as CEO of the NMDPRA.
President Tinubu charged all appointees and nominees to discharge their duties and responsibilities professionally as regulators of Nigeria’s oil and gas sectors.