PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari has approved the appointment of Thomas John to act as alternate chairman of the Governing board of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC.
The announcement was made in a Twitter post signed by Maikanti Baru, the outgoing group managing director of the corporation.
In the statement, John, a former GMD of the corporation, will hold the position until a new minister of petroleum resources or minister of state for petroleum resources is appointed.
BREAKING:
Press Statement: @MBuhari Appoints Acting Alternate Chairman of @NNPCgroup Governing Board
President @MBuhari has appointed Dr. Thomas M. A. John as Acting Alternate Chairman of the @NNPCgroup Governing Board.
Thread… pic.twitter.com/ePDO9QWsvy
— NNPC Limited (@nnpclimited) June 25, 2019
Ibe Kachikwu, the current minister of state for petroleum resources, was until John’s appointment, the chairman of the NNPC governing board.
The board is made up of nine members headed by the chairman and includes the GMD, the director-general of the ministry of finance and three persons appointed by the National Council of Ministers by virtue of their experience or wealth of knowledge of the oil industry.
Mahmoud Isa Dutse, permanent secretary of the federal ministry of finance and Abba Kyari, Buhari’s chief of staff, are two of the board members.
The statement said John will “assume the Chairmanship or Alternate Chairmanship position, respectively in line with Sections 1 (3) and 2 (1) of the NNPC Act” and the appointment is “with immediate effect.”
John who hails from Cross River state is a 1968 graduate of Chemical Engineering from Prague Institute of Chemical Technology, Czech Republic.
A commonwealth research fellow, he holds a PhD degree in Reaction Kinetics from Queen’s University Canada and is also a fellow of the Nigerian Society of Chemical Engineers.
He joined the NNPC in 1974 as a project engineer and spent 16 years supervising the design, engineering, construction and commissioning of the Warri and Kaduna refineries, as well as the three petrochemical plants in both states.
He was the first managing director of Eleme (Indorama) Petrochemical Company and was later appointed as NNPC GMD.
He voluntarily retired from the NNPC in 1992.
After his retirement, John served on the board of many companies including the United Bank for Africa (UBA).
He is the founder and chief executive officer of Hydropec Engineering Company Ltd.
Amos Abba is a journalist with the International Center for Investigative Reporting, ICIR, who believes that courageous investigative reporting is the key to social justice and accountability in the society.