President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has formally asked the Nigerian Senate to screen and confirm Taiwo Oyedele as Minister of State for Finance, replacing Doris Uzoka-Anite.
The request was conveyed in a letter read during Tuesday’s plenary session by Senate President Godswill Akpabio.
Oyedele’s background and career
Before his nomination, Oyedele served as chairman of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms, where he played a key role in shaping reforms aimed at restructuring Nigeria’s tax system.
The 50-year-old economist and public policy expert hails from Ikaram in Akoko, Ondo State.
He holds a Higher National Diploma in Accountancy and Finance from Yaba College of Technology and a Bachelor’s degree in Applied Accounting from Oxford Brookes University.
Oyedele has also completed executive education programmes at leading institutions including the London School of Economics, Yale University, Gordon Institute of Business Science and the Harvard Kennedy School.
He spent over two decades at PwC, where he joined in 2001 and rose to become Fiscal Policy Partner and Africa Tax Leader.
In academia, Oyedele serves as a professor at Babcock University and a visiting scholar at the Lagos Business School.
Additional nominations to NUPRC
In a separate request, President Tinubu also asked the Senate to confirm former senator Magnus Abe as Chairman of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), following the resignation of Gbenga Komolafe.
The President further nominated Paul Yaro Jezhi, a former chairman of the Trade Union Congress in Kaduna State, and Sunday Adebayo Babalola, a former deputy director at the now-defunct Department of Petroleum Resources, as non-executive commissioners of the commission.
Following the presentation of the letter, Senate President Akpabio referred the nominations to the Senate Committee on Petroleum Upstream for further legislative consideration.
