The Nigerian National Petroleum Company has said that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has the final say on the purported exit of its Group Chief Executive Officer, Mele Kyari, in January 2025.
However, NNPC described Kyari exit claims in January 2025 as
false.
NNPC spokesperson Olufemi Soneye disclosed in an interview
on Monday.
This comes as some industrial stakeholders believe that
Kyari, who would turn 60 years on January 8, 2025, may retire from service and
be replaced with one Bayo Ojulari.
Reacting, Soneye said the claims are rumors and false.
According to him, Kyari has his time and tenure in the NNPC;
however, it is the prerogative of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to keep or fire
the company’s GCEO.
“I don’t know anything about that; all those things are
rumors and false. The man (Mele Kyari) has his time and tenure; the president
has the final say. As the Minister of Petroleum, anything he wants to do, he will
do. For us, it is to continue with our work and do it right.”
He further explained that NNPCL’s appointments are based on
expertise, skills, and ability to deliver, not on ethnicity, religion, or other
sentiments.
“This is a global energy company. Movement in the company is
based on expertise, skills, and ability to deliver, not on the basis that you
are from X, Y, or Z; you are Muslim or Christian. Gone are the days we did
that; if we do that, we cannot have foreigners working for us. We have Dutch, American,
and British managing directors of our businesses. If we are doing only Muslim,
Christian, Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba, we won’t have them. Where we have Nigerians
that can deliver, they are there. We, the company, look for professionals that
can deliver,” he said.
This comes as some other players in the oil and gas sector
stated that the GCEO’s tenure is expected to terminate in 2027, in line with
Section 59 (2) of the Petroleum Industry Act 2021, which states that, “The
composition of the Board of the NNPC Limited shall be determined in accordance
with the Companies and Allied Matters Act and its Articles of Association.”
Kyari, alongside the Chief Executive of the Nigerian
Upstream Petroleum Commission, Gbenga Komolafe, are appointees of ex-President
Muhammadu Buhari who have survived President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s sack
sledgehammer.
This comes as Kyari, in November 2023, was reappointed by
Tinubu to continue to lead the country’s oil behemoth, its management board
chairman, and members.
Recently, United States-based Nigerian professor of
journalism Farooq Kperogi stirred controversy over Tinubu’s key appointments
into NNPC.
Kperogi, in an article titled ‘Tinubu’s Buharisation of the
NNPC,’ accused Tinubu of ethnic bias in his appointments at NNPCL in the manner
former President Muhammadu Buhari did.
Reacting to Kperogi’s article, the ex-governor of Kaduna
State, Nasir El-Rufai, chided Tinubu, saying two wrongs make a right and
therefore urged that inclusion in NNPC would have trumped exclusion.
However, the presidency, through Tinubu’s spokesperson, Bayo
Onanuga, said El-Rufai is taking a cheap shot against the president.
Earlier, former Kaduna Central Senator Shehu Sani faulted
El-Rufai’s alleged nepotism claim at NNPCL.
Recall that in November 2024, NNPC appointed Adedapo Segun
as its new Chief Financial Officer (CFO), taking over the position from Mr.
Umar Ajiya.
Similarly, the company announced the appointments of Mr.
Isiyaku Abdullahi as the Executive Vice President (EVP), Downstream, and Mr.
Udobong Ntia as the Executive Vice President (EVP), Upstream.
In July 2022, the oil firm transitioned from a public
corporation to a limited liability company.
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