The Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) 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.
Reports on Monday morning quoted NNPC’s spokesperson Olufemi Soneye as making the clarification.
Nonetheless, some industry stakeholders believe that Kyari, who would turn 60 years on January 8, 2025, may retire from service and be replaced with another senior officer.
But Soneye said the claims are rumours and false.
According to him, Kyari has his time and tenure in the NNPC. However, it is the prerogative of President Bola 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,” Soneye was further quoted as saying
Yet some other players in the oil and gas sector argued 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 and the Chief Executive of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Commission, Gbenga Komolafe, were appointed by former President Muhammadu Buhari. But both have survived President Bola Tinubu’s sack sledgehammer.
Kyari was reappointed by Tinubu in November 2023, 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 the NNPC.
Kperogi, in an article titled ‘Tinubu’s Buharisation of the NNPC,’ accused the president of ethnic bias in his appointments at NNPCL, in the manner former President Muhammadu Buhari did.
Reacting to Kperogi’s article, the former Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, chided Tinubu, saying two wrongs cannot make a right, urging 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.
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.