Ojulari Still Turns on the Lights at 60

If the Nigerian oil sector were a symphony, Bashir Bayo Ojulari would be its quiet conductor—precise, steady, rarely needing to raise his baton. Now 60, the Group Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) doesn’t just oversee crude and condensates; he shepherds faith.

Unlike the boisterous titans of the global oil stage, Ojulari didn’t thunder in. He slipped in through steel corridors and flare-lit nights, where pipelines snake through mangroves and trust is buried deeper than hydrocarbons. In a country where energy policy often burns hotter than the gas itself, Ojulari’s ascent was a masterclass in calm competence.

His fingerprints are everywhere, but he never leaves them smudged. Before helming the NNPCL, he led Renaissance Africa Energy’s audacious $2.4 billion acquisition of Shell’s onshore assets—a homegrown reclamation of control in a space long dominated by foreign accents and offshore interests. It wasn’t just a deal; it was a declaration.

Yet, the man who restructured supply chains and soothed foreign investors still is very humble. Indeed, his kind of leadership doesn’t swagger; it steadies. Inside the NNPCL, change is underway—not heralded by press releases, but felt in reformed procurement systems and unspoken trust returning to the corridors.

And if one leans in closely, past the jargon of reform and refinery turnarounds, they’ll hear something rare: a company rediscovering its conscience. That, too, is Ojulari’s doing.

At 60, he’s neither coasting nor crowing. He’s recalibrating Nigeria’s energy future—one policy at a time, one person at a time. His legacy may not be cast in bronze, but in barrels lifted, jobs restored, and a public slowly remembering what it means to believe in institutions.

For a sector that is long run on fumes of public skepticism, Ojulari remains a renewable source of something deeper: credibility.

And that, in Nigeria’s house of oil, is no small flame.