President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has approved the reconstitution of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC Ltd) board.
With the approval on Wednesday, April 2, President Tinubu sacked the chairman of the company, Chief Pius Akinyelure and the Group Chief Executive Officer, Mallam Mele Kyari.
The President equally removed all other board members appointed with Akinyelure and Kyari in November 2023.
The newly appointed 11-man board has Engineer Bashir Bayo Ojulari as the Group Chief Executive Officer (CEO) while Ahmadu Musa Kida was appointed as Non-Executive Chairman.
Adedapo Segun, who replaced Umaru Isa Ajiya as the Chief Financial Officer in November 2024, has been appointed to the new board by the President.
In line with the federal character, six board members, non-executive directors were appointed to represent the nation's geopolitical zones.
They include; Bello Rabiu – North West, Yusuf Usman – North East, and Babs Omotowa, a former Managing Director of the Nigerian Liquified Natural Gas (NLNG), will represent the North Central.
President Tinubu also appointed Austinf Avuru as a non-Executive Director to represent with the South-South, David Ige as a Non-Executive Director for the South West, and Henry Obih as a Non-Executive Director from the South East.
Mrs Lydia Shehu Jafiya, Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Finance, will represent the ministry on the new board, while Aminu Said Ahmed will represent the Ministry of Petroleum Resources.
A statement by Bayo Onanuga, Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, stated that all the appointments are effective today, April 2.
President Tinubu, invoking the powers granted under Section 59, subsection 2 of the Petroleum Industry Act, 2021, emphasised that the board’s restructuring is crucial for enhancing operational efficiency, restoring investor confidence, boosting local content, driving economic growth, and advancing gas commercialisation and diversification.
According to the statement President Tinubu also handed out an immediate action plan to the new board to conduct a strategic portfolio review of NNPC-operated and Joint Venture Assets to ensure alignment with value maximisation objectives.
The statement said that since 2023, the Tinubu administration has implemented oil sector reforms to attract investment, adding that last year (2024), the NNPC reported $17 billion in new investments within the sector.
It said the administration now envisions increasing the investment to $30 billion by 2027 and $60 billion by 2030.
“The Tinubu administration targets raising oil production to two million barrels daily by 2027 and three million daily by 2030.
“Concurrently, the government wants gas production jacked to 8 billion cubic feet daily by 2027 and 10 billion cubic feet by 2030.
“Furthermore, President Tinubu expects the new board to elevate NNPC’s share of crude oil refining output to 200,000 barrels by 2027 and reach 500,000 by 2030,” it said.
Ojulari, the new NNPC Limited Group CEO, hails from Kwara State. Until his new appointment, he was the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Renaissance Africa Energy Company which recently led a consortium of indigenous energy firms in the landmark acquisition of the entire equity holding in the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC), worth $2.4 billion.
The new board chairman, Ahmadu Musa Kida, an alumnus of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, where he received a degree in civil engineering in 1984, hails from Borno State. He also obtained a postgraduate diploma in Petroleum Engineering from the Institut Francaise du Petrol (IFP) in Paris.
Kida started his career in the oil industry at Elf Petroleum Nigeria and later joined Total Exploration and Production as a trainee engineer in 1985.
Musa became Total Nigeria’s Deputy Managing Director of Deep Water Services in 2015. Last year, he became an Independent Non-Executive Director at Pan Ocean-Newcross Group.
Apart from his oil industry career, Ahmadu Musa Kida is a former basketballer and the President of the Nigerian Basketball Federation (NBBF) board.
The President expressed gratitude to the old board members for their dedication to service to NNPC Limited, particularly their efforts in rehabilitating the old Port Harcourt and Warri refineries, which enabled them to resume petroleum product production after prolonged shutdowns.
The statement said that President Tinubu wished them well in all their future endeavours.