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By Tracy Moses
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has officially sworn in the newly appointed board and executive management of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) at the Presidential Villa in Abuja.
The brief ceremony held on Thursday held just before the President proceeded to attend the All Progressives Congress (APC) stakeholders’ summit at the Banquet Hall of the Villa, Abuja.
This inauguration comes nearly two months after Tinubu unveiled the new leadership team, effectively marking the end of Mele Kyari’s tenure as the Group Chief Executive Officer of the NNPCL.
The reconstituted board includes Adedapo Segun; Bello Rabiu, representing the North West; Yusuf Usman for the North East; and Babs Omotowa, former Managing Director of the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG), representing the North Central region.
Others are Austin Avuru as a non-executive director from the South-South, David Ige representing the South West, and Henry Obih from the South East.
Mrs. Lydia Shehu Jafiya, Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Finance, will serve as the ministry’s representative on the board, while Aminu Said Ahmed will represent the Ministry of Petroleum Resources.
All appointments took effect from April 2, 2025.
President Tinubu, in his address to the new board, issued a clear mandate: undertake a comprehensive strategic review of NNPCL’s operated and joint venture assets to align with the company’s value creation goals.
He emphasized the need to scale up oil production, revealing that the government aims to increase output to two million barrels per day by 2027 and hit three million barrels by 2030. In parallel, gas production is expected to rise to eight billion cubic feet daily by 2027 and 10 billion by 2030.
Additionally, the President urged the board to significantly grow NNPCL’s crude oil refining capacity to 200,000 barrels per day by 2027 and reach 500,000 barrels by the end of the decade.
The new board chairman, Ahmadu Musa Kida, a native of Borno State, is an alumnus of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, where he earned a degree in civil engineering in 1984. He also holds a postgraduate diploma in petroleum engineering from the Institut Français du Pétrole (IFP), Paris.
Kida began his oil industry career with Elf Petroleum Nigeria and later moved to Total Exploration and Production, where he started as a trainee engineer in 1985. He rose through the ranks to become Deputy Managing Director, Deep Water Services at Total Nigeria in 2015. He also served as an Independent Non-Executive Director at Pan Ocean, Newcross Group in 2024.
Wale Ojulari, the newly appointed Group CEO of NNPC Limited, hails from Kwara State. Prior to this role, he was Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Renaissance Africa Energy Company. His firm recently led a consortium of indigenous firms in acquiring Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC) in a landmark $2.4 billion deal.