Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has asked the country’s upper house of parliament to approve the nominations of two new chief executives for the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) and the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC).
The press release from the President’s Special Adviser on information, says that the requests to the Senate “followed the resignation of Engineer Farouk Ahmed of the NMDPRA and Gbenga Komolafe of the NUPRC”.
Both officials were appointed in September 2021 by former President Buhari to lead the two regulatory agencies created by the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA).
In effect, the Commission Chief Executive (CCE) of the NUPRC and the Authority Chief Executive (ACE) of the NMDPRA, were relieved of their jobs 10 months before the expiration of the five year tenure stipulated by the PIA.
The press release did not say anything about misconduct by the officials, although the Nigerian President can remove any head of an independent agency for that purpose.
The resignations happened less than 72 hours after Aliko Dangote, Chief Executive of the Dangote Group, publicly labelled NMDPRA’s Farouk Ahmed as corrupt, alleging that the public servant spent $5Million on secondary school education for his children in Switzerland.
Mr. Ahmed was struggling to wriggle himself out of a looming scandal, when the press release about his resignation came out.
It’s a remarkable coincidence that Mr. Dangote went to town against the NMDPRA chief, less than a week after the agency published the second of two monthly factsheets, which portray the 650,000Barrels Per Stream Day(BPSD) Dangote Refinery as having delivered far less volume of gasoline to the Nigerian market than it promised in the last one year.
TO FILL KOMOLAFE’s AND AHMED’s POSITIONS, President Tinubu requested the expedited confirmation of Oritsemeyiwa Amanorisewo Eyesan as CEO of NUPRC and Saidu Aliyu Mohammed as CEO of NMDPRA, the state house statement said.
Eyesan, a graduate of Economics from the University of Benin, spent nearly 33 years with the NNPC and its subsidiaries. She retired as Executive Vice President, Upstream (2023–2024), and previously served as Group General Manager, Corporate Planning and Strategy at NNPC from 2019 to 2023.
Saidu Aliyu Mohammed, born in 1957 in Gombe, graduated from Ahmadu Bello University in 1981 with a Bachelor’s in Chemical Engineering. He was announced today as an independent non-executive director at Seplat Energy.
His prior roles include Managing Director of Kaduna Refining and Petrochemical Company and Nigerian Gas Company, as well as Chair of the boards of West African Gas Pipeline Company, Nigeria LNG subsidiaries, and NNPC Retail.
He also served as Group Executive Director/Chief Operating Officer, Gas & Power Directorate, where he provided strategic leadership for major gas projects and policy frameworks, including the Gas Masterplan, Gas Network Code, and contributions to the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA).
Mohammed played a pivotal role in delivering key projects such as the Escravos–Lagos Pipeline Expansion, the Ajaokuta–Kaduna–Kano (AKK) Gas Pipeline, and Nigeria LNG Train.
