Ex-presidential aide calls for sweeping cleanup of oil & gas sector after regulatory shake-up

Former presidential aide and veteran journalist, Laolu Akande, has urged President Bola Tinubu to go beyond recent leadership changes in the oil and gas regulatory space and initiate a comprehensive cleanup of Nigeria’s petroleum sector. Speaking on Sunrise Daily on Channels Television, Akande reacted to the recent shake-up involving the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum […]

Former presidential aide and veteran journalist, Laolu Akande, has urged President Bola Tinubu to go beyond recent leadership changes in the oil and gas regulatory space and initiate a comprehensive cleanup of Nigeria’s petroleum sector.

Speaking on Sunrise Daily on Channels Television, Akande reacted to the recent shake-up involving the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) and the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), describing the president’s action as swift but insufficient if not followed by deeper reforms.

“I think the president acted very swiftly. Because, beside this very issue that Dangote has raised, I have always said that there are deeper corruption issues in the oil and gas sector especially the government aspect of it,” Akande said.

While welcoming the directive that led to the exit of the NMDPRA chief executive, Farouk Ahmed, Akande stressed that removing individuals must not be the end of the process.

“It’s good that this guy [NMDPRA boss Farouk Ahmed] has been asked to leave but we hope that the issue of investigating exactly what is happening in this specific case should not terminate,” he added.

Akande warned that Nigeria risks repeating a familiar cycle—sacrificing officials without addressing the entrenched systems that enable corruption. According to him, regulatory agencies alone cannot be isolated from the broader governance failures that have plagued the petroleum industry for decades.

More significantly, the former presidential aide called on President Tinubu to replicate the decisive reforms carried out in the Central Bank of Nigeria across the national oil company.

“More importantly, the president should consider doing what he did in CBN to Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited. The kind of corruption that is in that place is quite alarming even by the statements of the anti-corruption agencies who have been looking at the books,” Akande said.

His remarks come amid mounting public scrutiny of the oil and gas sector, particularly following allegations raised by industrialist Aliko Dangote over regulatory bottlenecks and opaque practices affecting refinery operations and fuel supply.

Akande argued that Nigeria’s economic recovery efforts will remain fragile as long as the oil and gas sector—still the backbone of government revenue and foreign exchange earnings—is riddled with inefficiency and corruption.

“Let’s have a cleaning up of the oil and gas sector,” he concluded.