By RismadarVoice Reporters
January 5, 2026
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has forwarded two separate letters to the Senate, seeking confirmation of 21 nominees for the boards of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) and the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC).
For the NUPRC, the President nominated former Senator representing Rivers South-East, Magnus Abe, as chairman of the board.
Abe is a former member of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) board and currently serves as chairman of the National Agency for the Great Green Wall.
Other nominees for the NUPRC board as non-executive commissioners are Engineer Paul Yaro Jezhi, a former chairman of the Trade Union Congress in Kaduna State, and Mr Sunday Adebayo Babalola, a former deputy director at the defunct Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), which was dissolved following the enactment of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) in 2021.
President Tinubu also nominated several executive commissioners for the NUPRC board. They include Muhammed Sabo Lamido (Finance), Mr 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.
While Lamido and Adeboyejo were initially appointed by former President Muhammadu Buhari in 2022, and Alka by President Tinubu in 2023, Inyang, Ezeala, Tijani, Babalola and Jezhi are new nominees.
In a second letter, President Tinubu nominated Mr Adegbite Ebiowei Adeniji, a legal practitioner with over 30 years’ experience in the energy and natural resources sector, as chairman of the NMDPRA board.
Adeniji previously served as special technical adviser to the Minister of State for Petroleum and was part of the World Bank Oil and Gas Policy team that advised Nigeria on petroleum sector reforms.
He is currently the managing partner at ENR Advisory.
Also nominated as non-executive members of the NMDPRA board are Chief Kenneth Kobani, a former Minister of State for Trade and former Secretary to the Rivers State Government, and Mrs Asabe Ahmed.
The President further nominated Abiodun Adeniji (Executive Director, Finance), Francis Ogaree (Executive Director, Hydrocarbon), Oluwole Adama (Executive Director, Midstream and Downstream Gas Infrastructure), and Dr Mustapha Lamorde (Executive Director, Corporate Services and Administration). Adama was appointed in 2024, while Lamorde, Adeniji and Ogaree were appointed between 2021 and 2022.
Other nominees to the NMDPRA board include Mr Yahaya Nasamu Yinusa (Executive Director, Distribution Systems), Adeyemi Murtala Aminu (Executive Director, Corporate Services), Ms Modie Ogechukwu (Executive Director, Economic Regulation and Strategic Planning), and Barrister Olawale Dawodu as board secretary and legal adviser.
President Tinubu urged the Senate to consider, approve the nominations expeditiously. The requests followed the recent confirmation by the Senate of Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan as Chief Executive Officer of NUPRC and Engineer Saidu Aliyu Mohammed as CEO of NMDPRA.
The President in a statement issued on Monday by Bayo Onanuga, Special Adviser, information & Strategy, charged all appointees and nominees to discharge their responsibilities with professionalism in regulating Nigeria’s oil and gas sector.
