That Mr. Mele Kolo Kyari has been appointed as the new Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) by President Muhammadu Buhari is an established fact.

Be that as it may, millions of Nigerians don’t much about him. We can tell you for free that he is a Geologist. He was the Group General Manager, Crude Oil Marketing Division of NNPC and also doubled, since 13th May, 2018, as Nigeria’s National Representative to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC.

He hails from Borno State and he is not related to Mallam Abba Kyari, Chief of Staff to the President.

Kyari, who was the Group General Manager (Crude Oil Marketing Division of NNPC), was appointed as GMD ahead of six Chief Operating Officers, a Chief Financial Officer and Company Secretary who altogether make up the Executive Management of the NNPC.

He will be the 19^th Group Managing Director of the National Oil Company. He has spent the last 24 years in NNPC. He is a 1987 Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) degree holder in Geology and Earth Science from the University of Maiduguri. Mallam Kyari did his National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) as a Well Site Geologist with the Directorate of Foods, Roads and Rural Infrastructure (DFRRI) between 1987 and 1988.

Between 1988 and 1991, he worked with the Nigerian Geological Survey Agency before joining the NNPC subsidiary, Integrated Data Services Limited (IDSL), where he worked as a Seismic Data Processing Geophysicist in the Data Processing Department.

In 1998, Kyari was appointed the Exploration Geophysicist Production Sharing Contract (PSC) of the National Petroleum Investments Management Services (NAPIMS) until 2004 when he became the Abuja Operations Manager of NAPIMS.

In 2006, he was appointed the Supervisor PSC, Crude Oil Marketing Department (COMD) of the NNPC, from where he rose to the position of Head, and later Manager of Production Contracts Management of the COMD between 2007 and 2014.

Kyari was appointed General Manager Oil Stock Management, COMD where he worked till 2015 before being appointed Group General Manager, COMD and later Nigeria’s National Representative at OPEC.

He has been a quintessential crude oil marketer with prerequisite certifications and outfield pedigree in Petroleum Economics and crude oil and gas trading. In the last 27 years, he had traversed the entire value chain of the Petroleum Industry, with exceptional records of performance.

He contributed to reconcile alleged loss of $48 billion and established actual status of transactions involving NNPC in 2014. As Team Leader, he pursued the determination of the tenure of the Amenam/Kpono carry arrangement with potential savings of over $1 billion; He also revised and initiated the process for the redetermination of the applicable fiscal regime for the Addax PSC with potential short-term savings of $1.6 billion.

In 2007, he won four awards, namely: GMD Prize for the Overall Best Performance for NNPC Management Development Program; GED CS Award for Best Performance in Leadership; GM Group Learning Division award for Best Project work, NNPC Management Development Programme; and Examiners award for 1st Runner-up for Effective Presentation.