Tinubu sends key nominations to Senate

President Bola Tinubu has asked the Senate to screen and confirm Taiwo Oyedele as Minister of State for Finance, replacing Dr Doris Uzoka-Anite.

The request was conveyed in a letter read on Tuesday during plenary by the President of the Senate, Senator Godswill Akpabio.

Oyedele, who hails from Ikaram in Akoko, Ondo State, previously served as chairman of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms, where he led efforts to overhaul Nigeria’s tax system.

The 50-year-old economist, accountant and public policy expert began his academic journey at Yaba College of Technology, where he obtained a Higher National Diploma in Accountancy and Finance. He later earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Applied Accounting from Oxford Brookes University.

He also attended executive education programmes at the London School of Economics, Yale University, the Gordon Institute of Business Science and the Harvard Kennedy School.

Oyedele spent 22 years at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), joining the firm in 2001 and rising to become Fiscal Policy Partner and Africa Tax Leader.

He currently serves as a professor at Babcock University in Ogun State and is a visiting scholar at the Lagos Business School.

In a separate letter, President Tinubu also requested the Senate to confirm former Rivers senator Magnus Abe as chairman of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), following the resignation of Gbenga Komolafe.

The president further nominated Engineer Paul Yaro Jezhi, a former chairman of the Trade Union Congress in Kaduna State, and Mr Sunday Adebayo Babalola, a former deputy director at the defunct Department of Petroleum Resources, as non-executive commissioners.

Senate President Akpabio subsequently referred the nominations to the Senate Committee on Petroleum Upstream for further legislative consideration.