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NNPC board: Tail shouldn’t wag the dog! *Avuru qualified to be CEO – PANDEF
There is no credible reason for the Niger Delta to continue playing second fiddle in the leadership of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited given its ownership of the oil and gas deposits for which the company was set up in the first place.
This was the position of the Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF), on Thursday in reaction to the constitution of a new board as announced by President Bola Tinubu on Wednesday, with both the offices of the Chairman of Board and the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer (MD-CEO) going elsewhere outside the region.
The regional body, which champions the interest of the oil-rich zone and Nigeria’s goose that lays the golden egg, argued that overlooking it despite the abundance of its abundant human resources in the oil and gas sector of the Nigerian economy, for the choice of the leadership of the company was akin to the tail wagging the dog.
Godknows Igali, PANDEF Chairman, told ARISE NEWS Network, while appearing on Prime Time, its public affairs programme that the relegation of the area despite its strategic position as the owners of Nigeria’s oil and gas, had remained quite worrisome.
Hear him: “Our representation, we don’t think it is fair to us. It is not fair to us because the oil, the gas, the natural resources in the oil and gas industry are produced in the Niger Delta, and there is no part of this country that has the amount of human resources in the oil and gas industry as the Niger Delta.
“Mind you, because this is a resource in our part of the country, University of Benin, University of Port Harcourt, University of Calabar – they started the relevant disciplines quite a long time ago. Even our people that went to universities abroad before then, focused on oil and gas. So, the core of professionals in the sector are from the area.
“Good, we have one of the most qualified people, Austin Avuru as an Executive Director. But if you look at the rating, he could have as well been the Group Managing Director. The point we’re making is that the days when you say we don’t have people are not there. There are qualified people.
“They can’t always want us to play from outside. Besides upstream, besides actual production, there are a number of issues – community issues, environmental issues – that it is only somebody who is from there that can smell the coffee – that can bring other factors to play.
“So, the persistent keeping out of the people of the Niger Delta from the core management of the NNPC does not augur well. It is not fair, it is not just, it is not a good way to promote proper inclusion of our people. It is a consistent policy of exclusion.
“Sometimes, some of us think it is deliberate to leave our people out. You don’t do this to people of the other parts of the country – for a period that we are not having the top, this continues to occur. But we’ll keep talking, because it is not fair. If we don’t have the people, its different. We have the critical mass of the professionals in the sector.
“So, why do you always leave them with auxiliary positions or a Minister of State position that is more or less a position of a placeholder. Even the position of a substantive Minister does not exist. You have a Minister of State for Gas, a Minister of State for Oil, who don’t have any substantive functions – just general policy issues – because you’re neither the Minister nor the proper Chief Executive of the industry.”
Igali, who admitted that things were different during the tenure of Goodluck Jonathan as President, because the area produced the substantive Minister, he said such a development would always create the required balance because Ministers had executive capacity not only to influence policies, but break all the other prevailing factors.
“But when you don’t have a substantive Minister, you don’t have a substantive member in the executive management of the sector, you’re excluded, Igali said, warning that the issue of environmental remediation of the region would continue to resonate for as long as there remained the absence of an intentional policy of the Nigerian government to the problem.
Justice Muhammad Nuraddeen Bello of High Court sitting in Sokoto State has sentenced three men, including a foreign national, to death by hanging, after convicting them on charges bordering on terrorism and arms proliferation.
The convicts, Yusuf Muhammad (alias Sallau), a Nigerien; Jabbi Alhaji Yalle; and Kabiru Muhammad, were apprehended on 13th June, 2025, by the Department of State Services (DSS) Counter Terrorism Unit in connection with cross-border criminal activities bordering on arms trafficking and terrorism.
Bello, who found all three defendants guilty as charged and sentenced them to death by hanging, while also ordering the forfeiture of all monetary exhibits recovered from the convicts to the Federal Government, said: “The conviction is the latest in a series of successful prosecutions by the DSS in its sustained operations against terrorism and organised cross-border criminal networks across Nigeria.”
The sentencing is coming about two weeks after the Federal High Court sitting in Abuja sentenced each of the five suspects arrested on May 31, 2026, by the DSS for their involvement in the November 21, 2025, attack on St Mary’s Catholic School, Papiri, Niger State, to 25 years’ imprisonment.
Justice Binta Nyako, had handed down the judgment after the men, including two Nigeriens, pleaded guilty to all four terrorism-related charges, bordering on support for the commission of an act of terrorism, breaching both Section 16 of the Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Act, 2022, and the Firearms Act, were pressed against them.
According to Count One, the men were accused of jointly conspiring to assist a terrorist by agreeing and intentionally playing various roles towards conveying 15 AK 103 rifles as well as about 1,434 rounds of 7.62mm live ammunition from the Diffa region, Republic of Niger, to one Malam Ahmad, a member of the Boko Haram terrorist group based in Borgu, Niger State, and thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 26(1) of the Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Act, 2022.
Primate Elijah Ayodele, is on the verge of coughing out a whopping N10billion, if he fails to offer unrestrained apology to Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, former Governor of Kano State within the next 24 hours, and retract his claim that the former Minister of Defence is bidding his time to betray Peter Obi, to whom he is to contest the 2027 presidential election as a running mate.
Without doing so, the controversial cleric, should be ready for a major court battle with the vice-presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), the platform on which the pair is to contest the election.
In a letter indicating a legal action against Ayodele of the INRI Evangelical Spiritual Church over defamatory remarks, Kwankwaso, through Magaji Mato Ibrahim, SAN & Co., his lawyers demanded an immediate retraction and apology from the cleric over the allegations.
Details of the letter, dated June 11, and unveiled through the X platform of the legal team, was based on a viral video recorded during a live-streamed church service, where the preacher made allegations targeting Kwankwaso’s integrity as Peter Obi’s running mate under the NDC.
Quoting the cleric as stating: “KWANKWASO IS A FAKE TO OBI, KWANKWASO WILL BETRAY YOU. KWANKWASO HAS BEEN PAID TO BE VICE PRESIDENT TO OBI AMONG OTHER LIBELOUS COMMENTS WHILE PRETENDING TO BE A PREACHER,” the former governor said the comments were unprovoked, grossly unfounded, and carefully designed to create a rift within the ranks of the political party and its supporters.
Handing Ayodele a 24-hour ultimatum to publish a full and unequivocal retraction across all social media platforms and news outlets with the same prominence as the original video, they also demanded a written undertaking that he would cease and desist from making any further malicious statements against their client, warning that failure to comply, would lead to full legal actions.
The letter stated: “We shall claim substantial damages to the tune of Ten Billion Naira and cost of the action on a full indemnity basis amongst other reliefs.”
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Tuesday demanded the immediate end to the exportation of minerals from countries in Africa in their raw forms, which he said had led to massive exploitation of the continent.
The President, told member countries of the African Minerals Strategy Group (AMSG), a forum of Ministers in charge of Mining and Solid Minerals on the continent to speak with one voice to promote, collective interests, ensure value addition, and prevent the continent from becoming merely a source of raw materials for the rest of the world.
As the Grand Patron of the group, chaired by Dele Alake, Nigeria’s Minister of Solid Minerals Development, gave the charge while receiving a delegation of AMSG in the State House, Tinubu told the delegation that the group had a critical role to play in strengthening Africa’s bargaining power in the global mineral market and ensuring that the continent derives maximum value from its natural resources.
His words: “ What we should do is avoid bureaucracy and deceit; we must put an end to exploitation. The rest of the world won’t mind if your country is a cesspit of dams and rubbish and excavates your raw materials without giving value.
“It is our responsibility to collaborate and cooperate to ensure that these metals and minerals bring value to us, bring technology to us, and we can do it. It is how much each country will put into the research, development and refinery. I don’t see reasons we cannot demand centralisation of that conversation somewhere on the continent. So why not utilise that in our research and development and knowledge-based economy to enhance the quality of life and bring prosperity to our people.”
Emphasising that Africa possessed enormous mineral wealth that should be strategically harnessed to drive industrialisation, create jobs and accelerate economic transformation across the continent, the President, said the era of exporting raw minerals without local processing and beneficiation must give way to a new model that encourages investment in local industries, technology transfer and the development of value chains that retain wealth within Africa.
Alake, who had earlier expressed gratitude to the President for his exemplary leadership under the Renewed Hope Agenda, said the gesture had shown support for Nigeria’s mineral sector, especially in the local value-addition and economic diversification drive, where artisanal miners are empowered.
He told the President: “You encouraged us to look at the focal point of the establishment of this group, which is to ensure that the African natural resources, especially with regards to minerals, critical matters, are localised, the beneficiation coming directly to Africans generally.
“You charged us that we should set our sails very high and ensure that local value addition is a pivot around which all the objectives of this organisation should revolve.
“So, sir, we have gone implemented your charge and we are quitted that today local value addition is reverberating all over Africa.”
He added that some member countries have gone ahead to ban the export of raw minerals.
He explained members of the body were in Abuja for the Fifth edition of the African Natural Resources and Energy Investment Summit (AFNIS 2026), to push for a new continental approach to resource management and industrial development.
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