Key questions this article answers:
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What is the role of the petroleum minister?
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How has Nigeria’s oil sector performed under the president’s watch, and who is qualified to hold the role?
Since 1999, Nigeria has had four presidents, and two of them, Olusegun Obasanjo and Muhammadu Buhari, have served as their own petroleum ministers.
Obasanjo was president from 1999 to 2007, but for six out of his eight years in office, President Obasanjo was also the petroleum minister. Towards the end of his first term in 2003, he appointed Edmund Dakoru as Special Adviser on Petroleum and Energy.
Again in 2005, during his second term, following lawsuits from Niger Delta organisations for taking on the petroleum minister role, he promoted Dakoru to the minister of State for petroleum.
The minister of state for petroleum is more like a deputy minister, and Nigeria’s petroleum law (the Petroleum Industry Act) does not
