Tinubu sacks NNPC CEO Kyari, board chair Akinyelure in major shake-up

• Ojulari,Kida to serve as new replacements

Onome Amuge

Mele Kyari, immediate former NNPC Group CEO 

President Bola Tinubu has implemented a restructuring of the board of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited by dissolving the current leadership of Pius Akinyelure as chairman and Mele Kyari as Group chief executive officer.

The development was announced in a statement released early Wednesday morning by Bayo Onanuga, special adviser to the president on information & strategy. The statement further confirmed that President Tinubu removed all other board members appointed alongside Akinyelure and Kyari in November 2023.

Pius Akinyelure, immediate former chairman, NNPC

The newly constituted NNPC Limited board comprises 11 members, including Bashir Bayo Ojulari, who was appointed as Group Chief Executive Officer, and Ahmadu Musa Kida, who assumed the role of non-executive chairman.

The NNPC Limited board comprises six non-executive directors representing Nigeria’s geopolitical zones, with Bello Rabiu representing the North-West, Yusuf Usman appointed for the North-East, and Babs Omotowa, a former managing director of the Nigerian Liquified Natural Gas (NLNG), serving as the North-Central representative.

The statement further detailed that President Tinubu selected three additional non-executive directors to represent the South-South, South-West, and South-East geopolitical zones.

Austin Avuru was chosen to represent the South-South, David Ige appointed as the South-West’s director, and Henry Obih selected to serve as the representative for the South-East.

To complete the board’s composition, President Tinubu named two representatives from the Federal Ministries of Finance and Petroleum Resources, respectively. Lydia Shehu Jafiya, the Permanent Secretary of the Finance Ministry, will serve on the board, representing the ministry’s interests and perspectives.

In addition, Aminu Said Ahmed was appointed to represent the Ministry of Petroleum Resources on the NNPC Limited board.

According to the statement, all the appointments are effective today, April 2.

The presidential spokesperson explained: “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.”

President Tinubu expressed his gratitude to the outgoing members of the NNPC Limited board for their valuable contributions and dedication to the organisation. 

He also dwelled on their instrumental role in restoring the Port Harcourt and Warri refineries to operation after prolonged inactivity.

Profile of  the newcNNPCL board chairman

Ahmadu Musa Kida, the new board chairman hails from Borno State. He is an alumnus of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, where he received a degree in civil engineering in 1984. He also obtained a postgraduate diploma in petroleum engineering from the Institut Francaise du Petrol (IFP) in Paris

Kida commenced his career in the oil industry at Elf Petroleum Nigeria and later joined Total Exploration and Production as a trainee engineer in 1985.He 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.

New CEO Ojulari’s profile

Bashir Bayo Ojulari, the new NNPC Limited Group CEO, is from Kwara State. Prior to his new appointment, he served as executive vice president and Chief Operating Officer of Renaissance Africa Energy Company. His Renaissance 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.

Ojulari, like Kida, is also an alumnus of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. He graduated with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. He 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.

Tinubu sets $60bn investment target by 2030

The statement also stated that in furtherance to the appointments, President Tinubu provided the newly reconstituted NNPC Limited board with a series of strategic directives. 

The board was tasked with conducting an extensive review of all NNPC-operated and Joint Venture assets, with a primary focus on ensuring that these assets are aligned with value maximization objectives.

The President’s plans aim to build on the successes achieved in the Nigerian petroleum sector in 2023, where NNPC reported a record-high $17 billion in new investments. 

Thus, the administration aims to achieve an ambitious increase in investments to $30 billion by 2027 and double this amount to $60 billion by 2030.

The government is targeting an increase in daily oil production to two million barrels by 2027, with a further target of three million barrels by 2030. Simultaneously, the administration aims to expand daily gas production to 8 billion cubic feet by 2027, with an ultimate goal of reaching 10 billion cubic feet daily by 2030.

In addition, President Tinubu has tasked the newly constituted NNPC Limited board withimproving the company’s domestic refining capacity, with a target to increase the organisation’s share of crude oil refining output to 200,000 barrels per day by 2027 and achieving a capacity of 500,000 barrels by 2030.