President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Tuesday asked the Senate to screen and confirm Mr Taiwo Oyedele as the new Minister of State for Finance, replacing Dr Doris Uzoka-Anite.
The President also requested the upper chamber to confirm former Rivers South-East senator, Magnus Abe, as chairman of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC).
The requests were conveyed in separate letters read during plenary by Senate President Godswill Akpabio.
In the letter seeking Oyedele’s confirmation, Tinubu urged the Senate to consider and approve the nomination as part of ongoing adjustments within the Federal Executive Council.
Before his nomination, Oyedele served as chairman of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms, where he led initiatives aimed at overhauling Nigeria’s tax system.
Oyedele, an economist, accountant and public policy expert from Ikaram in Akoko area of Ondo State, spent 22 years at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), where he rose to become Fiscal Policy Partner and Africa Tax Leader after joining the firm in 2001.
In another correspondence, Tinubu also requested the Senate to screen and confirm Abe as chairman of the NUPRC following the resignation of Gbenga Komolafe.
The President further nominated two individuals as non-executive commissioners of the commission. They include Paul Yaro Jezhi, a former chairman of the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria in Kaduna State, and Sunday Adebayo Babalola, a former deputy director at the defunct Department of Petroleum Resources.
Akpabio subsequently referred the nominations to the Senate Committee on Petroleum Upstream for further legislative action.
More details later.
