President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has formally requested the Senate’s confirmation of 21 nominees for the governing boards of Nigeria’s two key petroleum regulators, the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) and the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA).
The request was conveyed through two separate letters addressed to the Senate and read during plenary. According to a statement issued on Monday by the President’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, the nominations are aimed at strengthening regulatory oversight in the oil and gas sector.
For the NUPRC, President Tinubu nominated former senator Magnus Abe as board chairman. Abe represented Rivers South-East in the Senate for two terms and previously served on the board of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation. He currently chairs the National Agency for the Great Green Wall.
Also nominated as non-executive commissioners 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, which was dissolved following the enactment of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) in 2021.
The President further proposed seven executive commissioners for the NUPRC board. 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.
Lamido and Adeboyejo were initially appointed in 2022 by former President Muhammadu Buhari, while Alka was appointed by President Tinubu in 2023. Inyang, Ezeala, Tijani, Babalola, and Jezhi are new nominees.
In a separate letter, President Tinubu nominated Adegbite Ebiowei Adeniji as chairman of the NMDPRA board. Adeniji, a lawyer with more than three decades of experience in energy and natural resources, previously served as special technical adviser to the Minister of State for Petroleum on upstream and gas matters until 2018.
He has also worked with the World Bank’s Oil and Gas Policy team, advising the Nigerian government on petroleum sector reforms, including the development of the Strategic Gas Plan. Adeniji 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 previously served as Minister of State for Trade under former President Goodluck Jonathan and as Secretary to the Rivers State Government during the administration of Nyesom Wike.
Executive directors nominated for confirmation are 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 by President Tinubu, while Lamorde and Abiodun Adeniji were appointed in 2021 and Ogaree in 2022 under the Buhari administration.
Additional nominees for the NMDPRA board include Yahaya Nasamu Yinusa (Distribution Systems), Adeyemi Murtala Aminu (Corporate Services), Modie Ogechukwu (Economic Regulation and Strategic Planning), and Barrister Olawale Dawodu as board secretary and legal adviser. Dawodu is an industry professional who previously worked as a financial reporting manager within Exxon’s Nigerian subsidiaries.
President Tinubu urged the Senate to consider and approve the nominations without delay. The request comes shortly after the confirmation of the chief executive officers of both agencies — Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan as CEO of the NUPRC and Engineer Saidu Aliyu Mohammed as CEO of the NMDPRA.
The President also charged all confirmed appointees to carry out their responsibilities with professionalism, in line with their mandate to regulate Nigeria’s oil and gas industry under the Petroleum Industry Act.
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