NNPCL shake-up: MDs of Port Harcourt, Warri, Kaduna refineries sacked

NNPC logo

The new management of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited has fired the managing directors of the three refineries under the purview of NNPCL.

The refineries include the Port Harcourt Refining Company, Warri Refining and Petrochemical Company, and the Kaduna Refining and Petrochemical Company.

Some other senior officials of the national oil firm were also asked to leave, among them is Bala Wunti, a former chief of the National Petroleum Investment Management Services, a subsidiary of NNPCL.

The new management also asked many officials with one year to their various retirement dates to leave.

Although the company’s spokesperson, Olufemi Soneye, did not respond to enquiries on the matter when contacted, multiple impeccable sources at the firm familiar with development confirmed the shakeup by the new management team.

Recall that President Bola Tinubu, in a sudden move on April 2, 2025, sacked the former NNPCL Group Chief Executive Officer, Mele Kyari, and other board members of the national oil company, as part of a broader overhaul to boost Nigeria’s crude and gas output. Kyari had been at the helm of the national oil company since 2019.

Sources at the Presidency had told The PUNCH that the sack of Kyari and those affected at the time stemmed from mounting concern over performance and a failure to meet key production targets.

They said the shake-up was a performance-based reshuffle, arguing that those previously in charge “were going in circles” and some of them had “become part of the problem, rather than the solution.”

One official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak on the matter officially, told our correspondent, “The President did this because of their performance, because we needed to do things differently. The former people were taking us in circles, and then some of them became part of the problem.