Nigeria’s national oil company is at the centre of a deepening crisis that goes far beyond balance sheet numbers, one that involves allegations of systemic insider looting, an executive order of questionable legality, and growing accusations that President Bola Tinubu has ethnically captured the country’s most valuable economic institution.

NNPC Limited’s statutory payments to the federal government declined sharply to ₦726 billion in January 2026 — a 42.83 percent drop from the ₦1.27 trillion remitted in December 2025, according to the company’s Monthly Report Summary released on Monday. GB News The fall is all the more startling given that crude oil and gas production volumes actually rose during the same period, raising immediate questions about where the money went.

Industry sources and analysts say the revenue shortfall is not merely an accounting anomaly — it reflects years of deliberate structural manipulation that enriched a small circle of insiders at the expense of all three tiers of government.

Present and past top players in the oil and gas industry agree that under the previous structure, the Group Chief Executive Officer of NNPC wielded enormous influence and could, to a large extent, determine Nigeria’s fiscal direction depending on how and when funds were released to the Federation Account after cost deductions. There have been stories of delayed remittances that created room for huge interest earnings, shared monthly by economic buccaneers feeding fat on collective wealth. Punch
The most frustrating aspect of the anomalies, analysts say, was that NNPC’s massive political influence made it very difficult to hold top officials accountable, a situation that persisted across multiple administrations.

A Punch editorial captured the scale of the rot bluntly: between 2023 and 2024, approximately ₦13.2 trillion was injected into the Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna refineries for turnaround maintenance, operations, staffing, security and bank charges, yet the refineries produced virtually nothing. Despite not producing anything, the moribund refineries spent between ₦127 billion and ₦137 billion annually on salaries and employee benefits for roughly 1,600 to 1,700 staff. Sky Sports

Faced with mounting evidence of revenue leakages, President Tinubu signed Executive Order 9 on February 13, 2026, directing that all oil and gas revenues, including royalties, taxes and profit oil, be paid directly into the Federation Account, stripping NNPC of its power to make deductions before remittance.

Under the previous framework, NNPC retained 30 percent of Federation oil revenues as a management fee on profit oil and gas, plus another 30 percent as a frontier exploration fund, in addition to a 20 percent retention for working capital. The executive order terminated all three categories of deductions with immediate effect.

But the order has triggered fierce legal and political pushback. Oil governance expert and Professor Emeritus of Petroleum Economics Wumi Iledare argued that the Frontier Exploration Fund, the Midstream and Downstream Gas Infrastructure Fund, and existing Production Sharing Contract fiscal structures were statutory constructs established by the National Assembly — meaning substantive alterations might require legislative amendment, not merely an executive order, to ensure constitutional alignment.

The African Democratic Congress went further, describing Tinubu’s earlier approval of the cancellation of $1.42 billion and ₦5.57 trillion in legacy NNPC debts owed to the Federation Account as unconstitutional and harmful to states and local governments. “As a nation of laws and not of men, no President can override what the Constitution protects,” the ADC said, warning that the move amounted to a clear violation of Section 162 of the 1999 Constitution.

Critics have also questioned whether the executive order will make any real difference, or simply transfer the “soup pot from the old cabals to some new sheriffs.”

Equally explosive are the accusations that President Tinubu, himself the Minister of Petroleum Resources, has systematically installed his Yoruba kinsmen in virtually every key position across Nigeria’s oil and financial architecture, in flagrant violation of the Federal Character principle enshrined in the constitution.

A prominent commentator noted that the Minister of Finance, the Governor of the Central Bank, and every other consequential agency in finance is headed by a Yoruba man, saying: “I am not sure Nigeria has ever seen this level of extreme, state-sanctioned ethnocentric domination of a critical segment of national life.”

At the NNPC specifically, Chief Pius Akinyelure from the Southwest serves as Non-Executive Board Chairman, while Gbenga Komolafe, also from the Southwest heads the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission as its highest-ranking upstream regulator. The head of NNPC Upstream Investment Management Services was replaced by one Seyi Omotowa. When the name of Bayo Ojulari, also Yoruba emerged as a frontrunner for the Group Managing Director position, murmurs erupted across northern Nigeria.

The news of Ojulari’s impending appointment did not go down well with some northern elements who complained about what they described as the president’s lopsided appointments in favour of his Yoruba kinsmen, including powerful portfolios like the central bank governor, chairman of the federal tax agency, and head of customs, all responsible for the bulk of the country’s revenue.

NNPC pushed back on the ethnic narrative. Its spokesperson Femi Soneye said: “Employment, promotions, appointments and movements of business leaders at the NNPC are not influenced by ethnicity, tribe, religion or political affiliation.” ESPN But that denial has done little to silence the critics.

Even a well-regarded Yoruba supporter of President Tinubu — the source who originally raised the alarm — said he was doing so out of embarrassment, warning that if a Yoruba man were to be GMD, another Yoruba man the Chairman, and yet another Yoruba man the chief regulator, “that’s extreme lopsidedness,” and other parts of Nigeria would be justified to feel uncomfortable.

The convergence of a 43% revenue collapse, unresolved insider theft allegations, a legally contested executive order, and a federal character crisis at the heart of Nigeria’s oil sector presents Tinubu with perhaps his most politically dangerous domestic challenge yet. With states and local governments dependent on Federation Account allocations to pay salaries and fund services, the stakes could not be higher.

For now, the question on the lips of analysts, opposition figures and ordinary Nigerians is the same: is Executive Order 9 a genuine reckoning with decades of oil sector corruption or simply a reshuffling of who controls the taps?