₦airaland Forum

I had the NMDPRA boss was removed because of qualification inconsistency. And they discovered that after senate screening?
While they are shielding others still doing their bidding like this one; https://www.nairaland.com/8658089/how-uche-nnajis-appointment-nnanyelugo

The anyhowness in this government is just too much. This was also how the former NEITI boss was removed while on official duty abroad; https://www.thecable.ng/revealed-orji-removed-as-neiti-executive-secretary-while-on-foreign-trip/

Only 4 months in office? This one shock me o.

President Bola Tinubu sacked Saidu Mohammed as the chief executive officer (CEO) of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) while he was on official duty in Germany.

According to a post by the oil industry regulator via X on Wednesday at 4:05pm, Mohammed had led delegates from NMDPRA to the Pipeline Technology Conference (PTC), taking place in Berlin, Germany.

“The Authority Chief Executives, Engr. Saidu Mohammed leads NMDPRA delegates to the
Pipeline Technology Conference taking place in Berlin, Germany from 27th to 30th April, 2026,” NMDPRA said.

Two hours after the post was made, Bayo Onanuga, special adviser to the president on information and strategy, announced that Tinubu has removed Mohammed as NMDPRA CEO and replaced him with Rabiu Abdullahi Umar.

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Mohammed was sacked five months after withdrawing his decision to join the Seplat board as an independent non-executive director in December 2025, to lead NMDPRA.

Tinubu had announced Mohammed as NMDPRA’s CEO after Farouk Ahmed’s resignation on December 17, the same day Seplat disclosed he will be joining the company’s board.

Following his short tenure, Onanuga said Tinubu thanked Mohammed for his service and wished him well in his future endeavours.

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The spokesperson said Tinubu is committed to ensuring capable leadership in key regulatory institutions to advance energy security, sector reform, and sustainable economic growth.

In November 2025, Tinubu also removed Ogbonnaya Orji from his position as executive secretary of the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) while away on a foreign trip.

Source: https://www.thecable.ng/spotted-saidu-mohammed-removed-as-nmdpra-ceo-while-on-official-duty-in-germany/

When Chief Uche Nnaji, Nigeria’s then Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology, announced the appointment of Prof. Nnanyelugo Martin Ike-Muonso as Director-General of the Raw Materials Research and Development Council (RMRDC) in May 2024, the backlash was almost immediate. Stakeholders, professional engineers, scientists, and legal analysts pointed to the same provision of law: Section 9(2)(b) of the RMRDC Act 2022, which mandates that any DG of the Council must possess a minimum of 18 years post-qualification experience specifically in science, engineering, and technology subjects.
Prof. Ike-Muonso holds a Bachelor of Science, Master of Science, and doctorate, all in Economics. He has no known background in science, engineering, or technology, and has never worked in a research laboratory. His appointment, critics argued from the outset, did not just bend the law, it broke it openly.
Today, nearly two years later, Prof. Ike-Muonso is still in office. And the controversy, far from fading, has deepened.
The Law Is Unambiguous
The RMRDC Act 2022 leaves virtually no room for interpretation. Section 9(2)(b) states that the Director-General shall possess ‘at least 18 years post qualification experience in science, engineering and technology subjects with vast cognate experience in raw materials acquisition, exploitation, conservation and development.’
“Trading in commodities or raw materials is not and will never be a Science and Engineering qualification. If it were, a lot of traders with long experiences trading in commodities could also be found for the DG role.” — Adekola Malomo, Abuja-based legal analyst, writing in TechEconomy.ng, June 2024
Legal analysts writing at the time noted the use of the word ‘shall’ — a term of legal imperative, not of discretion. ‘The framers of the RMRDC Act were cognisant of these in using the word “shall” to provide needed guidance on the prerequisites or legal threshold to be met,’ wrote Adekola Malomo, an Abuja-based analyst, in a widely-circulated opinion published by TechEconomy.ng in June 2024. ‘The word “shall” is used in legal drafting to impose a duty. A duty the Minister and all those responsible have woefully failed to discharge in making the appointment.
The immediate past DG of RMRDC was an engineer. The one before him was also an engineer. Neither Ike-Muonso, nor Minister Nnaji at the time, nor the Presidency responded publicly to the specific statutory objections raised by petitioners.
A Probe That Died With Its Chairman
In June 2024, as reported by Punch Newspaper, the House of Representatives Committee on Science Research Institutions, chaired by Hon. Olaide Akinremi, responded to public pressure by inaugurating a seven-member ad-hoc committee, chaired by Hon. Abiodun Akinlade, to investigate the appointments of both the RMRDC DG and the Director-General of the National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA). The committee was specifically tasked with examining compliance with the relevant laws and regulations that established both agencies.

It was a promising development. But weeks later, on July 10, 2024, Hon. Olaide Akinremi, the chairman of the Science Research Committee who had convened the probe, died at the age of 51 following a brief illness. The House suspended plenary to mourn him.
The RMRDC investigation quietly stalled. No public report was presented to the House. No findings were published. No action followed. The probe effectively died with its convener.
Sources familiar with the committee’s work told this reporter that following Akinremi’s death, there was neither a formal transfer of the investigation’s mandate to a successor committee nor any formal communication dissolving or concluding the probe. The matter has since disappeared from the legislative agenda.
The Minister Who Fell, and What He Knew
The story of Prof. Ike-Muonso’s appointment cannot be told without the story of the man who made it possible. Chief Uche Nnaji, who served as Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology from August 2023 until October 2025, was himself at the centre of a credential scandal that dwarfs, in institutional terms, the questions raised about the RMRDC DG.
In October 2025, Premium Times published an investigation revealing that Nnaji had forged both his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and his National Youth Service Corps discharge certificate, the very documents he submitted to President Bola Tinubu and the Nigerian Senate during his 2023 ministerial confirmation. UNN’s Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Simon Ortuanya, confirmed in a letter that although Nnaji was admitted to the institution in 1981, he did not complete his studies and was never awarded a degree. The NYSC separately disowned the discharge certificate in his possession.
Nnaji resigned three days after the investigation was published. President Tinubu, according to presidential aides, personally invited the former minister to the Villa and asked him to step down. A federal government investigative panel constituted by the Minister of Education subsequently confirmed, in a report submitted in December 2025, that Nnaji had indeed forged his UNN degree certificate. The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission opened its own investigation in February 2026 with criminal prosecution remaining a possibility.
A man who forged his own academic credentials appointed a DG whose own credentials are now in question. Critics argue it was a case of complicit silence. Two politicians with credential vulnerabilities, each with a stake in the other’s continued legitimacy.
The now-confirmed forgery by Nnaji casts a sharp retrospective light on his conduct in office. Critics have asked: did a minister who knew his own academic records were fabricated have any incentive to rigorously verify, or to block challenges to, the qualifications of his appointee? The question remains unanswered, but it is being asked with increasing frequency in policy circles.
The Doctorate and the Professorship Questions That Persist
Beyond the RMRDC Act qualification issue, a separate set of questions have emerged around Prof. Ike-Muonso’s academic credentials. Specifically, his claimed doctorate from ESEADE University Institute (Instituto Universitario ESEADE) in Buenos Aires, Argentina, reportedly obtained in 2007, and his professorial title.
ESEADE is a small, privately-run graduate institution in Buenos Aires, founded in 1978 and enrolled with under 250 students. It is ranked 76th among 127 universities in Argentina, and 26th among 40 universities in Buenos Aires, a modest standing for an institution from which a leading federal agency chief claims his highest academic degree. According to a Mises Institute graduate programme directory published around the relevant period, ESEADE launched a PhD programme in Economics in 2003, meaning such a degree was technically available when Ike-Muonso is said to have enrolled.
However, current programme data from university ranking and database platforms now lists ESEADE’s only doctoral offering as a Doctorado en Administración de Empresas, equivalent to a Doctorate in Business Administration (DBA). A DBA is a professional doctorate designed for experienced practitioners and is distinct in academic standing and purpose from a traditional, research-intensive PhD in Economics. Whether the degree obtained in 2007 was a conventional academic PhD in Economics or its professional DBA equivalent has not been publicly clarified by Prof. Ike-Muonso or the Ministry.
It is noteworthy that ESEADE University from which Martin Ike-Muonso claims to have obtained a doctorate degree has Spanish as a sole language of instruction. One wonders how Martin Ike-Muonso attained a level of proficiency in Spanish to obtain a doctorate degree.
A search of Google Scholar, ResearchGate, and the Web of Science database yields no peer-reviewed journal publications attributable to Prof. Nnanyelugo Martin Ike-Muonso in economics, raw materials science, or any related discipline. He does not appear on the National Universities Commission’s publicly available list of recognized professors in Nigeria.
The professorial title itself raises questions. In Nigeria’s academic framework, a professorship is conferred by a university following a peer-reviewed assessment of research output, teaching record, and scholarly contributions, typically requiring a substantial portfolio of publications in indexed journals. A title claimed purely on the basis of a foreign doctoral degree, without a professorial appointment at a recognized Nigerian or foreign university, is not a professorial title in the conventional academic sense.
Our reporters could not independently verify through any publicly accessible database, including the NUC’s records, Google Scholar, ResearchGate, or the Web of Science, that Prof. Ike-Muonso has published peer-reviewed research in any scholarly journal. His name appears in RMRDC’s own publications and policy documents, but these are institutional outputs made after he had been appointed the DG, not peer-reviewed academic research.
The New Minister and his Indifference
Following Nnaji’s resignation in October 2025, President Tinubu nominated Dr. Kingsley Tochukwu Udeh as the new Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology. The Senate confirmed him on Nov. 6, 2025.
Dr. Udeh has since assuming the office, moved energetically, but continued to act like all is well with the agencies under his purview.
To the frustration of stakeholders who first raised the alarm in 2024, there is no public indication that Minister Udeh has reviewed the legality of the DG’s appointment or that he intends to.
‘The argument is not about his personality or even his performance, which leaves nothing to be admired. He has grossly underperformed. How can we expect optimal performance from a DG who lacks the science, technology, and engineering background to oversee research and development of basic and industrial raw materials,’ said one Abuja-based policy analyst who requested anonymity because of professional sensitivities. ‘It is about whether the law means anything. Section 9 of the RMRDC Act says what it says. Either we enforce it, or we accept that enabling laws are decorative. That is the principle at stake.’
The Nigerian Society of Engineers, the Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN), and the Academic Staff Union of Research Institutions (ASURI), all cited in earlier advocacy as bodies that should intervene, have made no public statements on the matter. Whether they have raised concerns privately with the Ministry is not known.
Tinubu Has Done It Before
Critics note that President Tinubu has demonstrated willingness to reverse appointments when faced with clear evidence of legal infractions or disqualification. He revoked the appointment of 24-year-old Kashim Imam as chairman of the Board of Directors of the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA) following public outcry. He removed Chukwuemeka Woke as DG of the Ogun-Osun River Basin Development Authority after objections that the appointee was not from the South West region. He declared an indefinite suspension of all governing board appointments of Nigerian tertiary institutions following complaints of non-conformity with Federal Character principles. He accepted Uche Nnaji’s own resignation after his forged certificates were exposed.
In each of those cases, the infraction was arguably less juridically clear-cut than the one now alleged at RMRDC, where the statutory qualification requirement is written in plain, mandatory language that admits no ambiguity about the required professional background.
The Cost of Silence
The RMRDC’s mandate is central to Nigeria’s industrialization agenda: to coordinate research into the development and exploitation of Nigeria’s industrial raw materials, reduce import dependency, and facilitate the growth of local manufacturing. In a country that imports most of what it consumes, from pharmaceuticals to plastics, the Council’s work is not ceremonial.
Whether or not Prof. Ike-Muonso’s tenure has been productive is a separate debate. What is not debatable, critics say, is whether his appointment was lawful. The RMRDC Act 2022 set its qualification standards precisely to ensure that the agency would be led by someone with deep scientific, engineering, or technological grounding, someone who could evaluate research outputs, drive laboratory innovation, and meaningfully engage with scientists and engineers.
An economist at the helm of a scientific research institution may bring genuine intellectual and managerial value. But the Act’s drafters did not leave the qualification question to ministerial discretion. They used ‘shall.’ And in law, ‘shall’ means shall.

Source: https://swiftreportersonline.com/2026/04/19/unqualified-and-unremoved-how-prof-ike-muonsos-continued-stay-as-raw-materials-research-and-development-council-dg-tests-due-process-and-the-rule-of-law/