(Published by The Southerner, Thursday, April 10, 2025)

The people of the South-South geopolitical zone are still suffering from marginalisation. They are being marginalised by the Tinubu administration in the management of the affairs of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC).

The new Group Chief Executive Officer of the state oil corporation, mmBayo Ojulari, on Friday, April 4, officially took over the oil empire, succeeding Mele Kyari. President Bola Tinubu, on Wednesday, April 2, appointed Ojulari to replace Kyari, while Ahmadu Musa Kida was named NNPC’s non-executive chairman, replacing Pius Akinyelure.

NNPC’s spokesperson, Olufemi Soneye, in a statement said Ojulari commended Kyari for his contributions to the growth of NNPC and his service to the nation, noting that during the handover ceremony at the NNPC Towers on Friday, the CEO said his management will build on the successes of Kyari.

“He disclosed that the objective of his management was to consolidate on the successes of his predecessor and take the company to the next level. He said though the targets set for his management were quite enormous, he would be relying on the co-operation of the Management and staff of the company, as well as the counsel of his predecessor to achieve set targets”, the NNPC spokesperson said.

Earlier, Special Adviser to President Tinubu on Information & Strategy, Bayo Onanuga,
announced the reconstitution of the board, removal of Akinyelure and Kyari by his principal. Tinubu also removed all other board members appointed with Akinyelure and Kyari in November 2023.

While the new 11-man board has Ojulari, an engineer, as the big boss and Kida as non-executive chairman, Adedapo Segun, who replaced Umaru Isa Ajiya as the chief financial officer last November, has been appointed to the new board by the president. Six board members, non-executive directors, represent the country’s geopolitical zones. They are Bello Rabiu (North-West)t, Yusuf Usman (North-East), and Babs Omotowa, a former managing director of the Nigerian Liquified Natural Gas (NLNG), who represents North-Central.

Tinubu appointed Austin Avuru as a non-executive director from the South-South, David Ige as a non-executive director from the South-West, and Henry Obih as a non-executive director from the South-East. Mrs Lydia Shehu Jafiya, permanent secretary of the Federal Ministry of Finance, is representing the ministry on the new board, while Aminu Said Ahmed is representing the Ministry of Petroleum Resources.

Invoking the powers granted under Section 59, subsection 2 of the Petroleum Industry Act, 2021, Tinubu 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.

He 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. Since 2023, the Tinubu administration has been implementing oil sector reforms to attract investment without the active involvement of the peoples of the oil region.

Last year, NNPC reported $17 billion in new investments within the sector. The administration now envisions increasing the investment to $30 billion by 2027 and $60 billion by 2030. Abuja is targeting to raise oil production to two million barrels daily this year, and three million daily by 2030. Concurrently, the government wants gas production jacked to six billion cubic feet daily by 2027 and 10 billion cubic feet by 2030.

Tinubu is therefore expecting 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. The new board chair, Kida, is 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

He started 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, Kida is a former basketball player and the president of the Nigerian Basketball Federation(NBBF) board.

On the other hand, Ojulari hails from Kwara State. Until his new appointment, He was 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.

Like Kida, Ojulari 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 Nigeria Council) and a fellow of the Nigerian Society of Engineers.

Since its establishment in 1977, NNPC has been led by several group managing directors and later, GCEOs, each playing a significant role in shaping Nigeria’s oil and gas industry.

It should, however, be noted that all societies are built by those in power. In a working democracy, the people get to pick who gets the power to shape their societies. But, in Nigeria, important policies and decisions are being affected by a select few. The further one is from those people, the greater chance there is that their needs will be ignored.

In our twisted democracy, the South-South is struggling to gain access to schools, jobs, or even housing opportunities that would allow them to live in new communities. So, in Tinubu’s Nigeria, marginalisation exists in plural forms, and against the peoples of the South-South and Ndigbo. Though there are three main typologies of marginalisation – social marginalisation, economic marginalidation and political marginalisation, we are concerned with economic marginalisation here.

This means that the oil-bearing bloc doesn’t have the same chances as Tinubu’s “Lagos boys” to contribute to and benefit from the oil and gas economy.

We don’t have the chance to get juicy jobs, yet, the region is blessed with people equipped with the skills to effectively manage the oil sector. Despite their huge mineral resources, the excluded oil ‘owners’ are struggling to make money to live a life of survival, or to even access critical healthcare if they fall ill.

As we are seeing it, the marginalisation of the Tinubu variety encompasses structural, interpersonal, and intergroup dynamics that is perpetuating inequality and exclusion. Such a callous deprivation keeps fueling all sorts of agitation and violent conflict aimed at resource ownership and control by any means necessary.