President Bola Tinubu has nominated former Rivers South-East senator, Magnus Abe, to serve as chairman of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), following the resignation of Gbenga Komolafe.
The announcement came on Monday in a statement by the President’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, revealing that Tinubu has written to the Senate seeking confirmation for 21 nominees across the NUPRC and the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA).
“In the first letter, President Tinubu nominated Senator Magnus Abe to serve as the NUPRC board chair,” the statement said.
Abe, a two-term senator representing Rivers South-East, is a former board member of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited and currently chairs the National Agency for the Great Green Wall.
Other NUPRC board nominees include Engineer Paul Yaro Jezhi, former Trade Union Congress chairman in Kaduna State, and Mr. Sunday Adebayo Babalola, former deputy director at the defunct Department of Petroleum Resources, both nominated as non-executive commissioners.
Executive commissioner nominations for the NUPRC board include Muhammed Sabo Lamido (finance), Edu Inyang (exploration and acreage), Justin Ezeala (economic regulation and strategic planning), Henry Darlington Oki (development and production), Indabawa Bashari Alka (corporate services and administration), and Mahmood Tijani (health, safety and environment). Ms. Olayemi Adeboyejo was nominated as secretary and legal adviser.
In a separate letter, President Tinubu nominated Mr. Adegbite Ebiowei Adeniji, a lawyer with over 30 years’ experience in the energy sector, as chairman of the NMDPRA board. Adeniji previously served as a technical adviser to the minister of state for petroleum and collaborated with the World Bank on Nigeria’s oil and gas reforms.
The president urged the Senate to “approve the nominees expeditiously,” noting that the requests followed the recent appointment of chief executive officers for both regulatory agencies.
Tinubu charged all nominees to discharge their responsibilities “professionally as regulators of the oil and gas sectors.”
