Workers under the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) chapter of the Ministry of Petroleum Resources (MPR) have strongly rejected the appointment of Aminu Said Ahmed to the board of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC), describing it as a violation of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) 2021.
President Bola Tinubu had, last week, named Mr Ahmed—a senior manager at the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA)—as the representative of the Petroleum Ministry on the NNPC board. But the decision has sparked outrage within the ministry.
In a viral protest video circulating online, members of the labour union insisted that Mr Ahmed is not a staff member of the Petroleum Ministry and therefore lacks the legal standing to represent it. According to them, the appointment contravenes Section 59(2)(d) of the PIA, which mandates that the ministry’s representative on the NNPC board must be of a rank not below that of a director within the ministry.
“This is a gross violation of the law,” said an NLC representative at the demonstration. “Aminu Said Ahmed is a Grade Level 14 officer at a regulatory agency and not a director from the Ministry of Petroleum Resources.”
Echoing this concern, energy expert Abolade Adewale, speaking on behalf of a group of concerned professionals, said the NMDPRA is a statutory regulatory agency independent of the Ministry. He stressed that appointing one of its staff to represent the Ministry on the NNPC board was a misrepresentation of institutional boundaries.
The labour union accused certain interests of conspiring to marginalise the Ministry within the governance structure of the NNPC. They also pointed to the appointment of the Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Finance (FMF) to the same board as evidence of proper adherence to the law and urged that the same standard be applied to the Petroleum Ministry.
“The PIA is clear. Just as the Finance Ministry is represented by its Permanent Secretary, the Petroleum Ministry must be represented by a serving Director or its Permanent Secretary,” said another union member.
The protesting workers called on President Tinubu to reverse the appointment and replace Mr Ahmed with a qualified official from the Ministry, in line with the provisions of the PIA 2021.
They expressed hope that the President would act swiftly to correct what they described as an affront to the rule of law and a breach of institutional protocol.
