President Tinubu Replaces Mele Kyari With Ojulari As Group CEO Of NNPCL, Reconstitutes Board

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Wednesday, April 2, 2025, approved a sweeping reconstitution of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC Ltd) board.

Accordingly, President Tinubu has removed the chairman of the company, Chief Pius Akinyelure and the Group Chief Executive Officer, Mallam Mele Kolo Kyari.

The President also 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.

MORE NEWS: CELEBRATING THE BIRTHDAY OF THE KING OF DEBT RECOVERY IN NIGERIA

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 the same vein, Six board members, non-executive directors were appointed to represent the country’s geopolitical zones. They are 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 Austin 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.

Similarly, 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.

The President 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.

Related News:

• The Need For Private Investigators To Review AMCON'S Operations Over The Last Decade
• How Non Payment Of Your Debt Affect Your Integrity
• Strengthening Fight Against Financial Fraud in Nigeria 
• Understanding The Dangers of Financial Fraud And How To Stay Clean

It said the administration now envisions increasing the investment to $30 billion by 2027 and $60 billion by 2030.

According to Onanuga; “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.

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.

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.

Like Kida, Ojulari is also an alumnus of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. He graduated with a degree in Mechanical Engineering and worked for Elf Aquitaine as the first Nigerian process engineer to begin a stellar career in the oil sector. From Elf, he joined Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Ltd in 1991 as an associate production technologist.

Apart from working in Nigeria, he worked in Europe and the Middle East in different capacities as a petroleum process and production engineer, strategic planner, field developer, and asset manager. In 2015, he became the managing director of Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company (SNEPCO).

During his career, he was chairman and member of the board of trustees of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE Nigerian Council) and a fellow of the Nigerian Society of Engineers.

President Tinubu thanked the old board members for their dedicated 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.

Tinubu wished them well in their future endeavours.