Ministry officials announced that Nigerian Timipre Sylva has resigned as minister of state for Petroleum. He left office in order to seek reelection as governor of the oil-producing Bayelsa State in the southern Niger Delta.
On May 29, outgoing President Muhammadu Buhari will transfer authority to incoming President Bola Tinubu, coinciding with Sylva’s resignation.
Sylva reportly quit last week and stopped showing up for work after submitting his resignation letter to Buhari. President Buhari is also the petroleum minister.
He is set to run for governor of Bayelsa on the ticket of the ruling All Progressives Congress. The party primaries will hold on April 14.
Sylva served as the governor of Bayelsa for a full term from 2008 to 2012. He was a supporter of the People’s Democratic Party. His former party which dominated the federal government at the time but is now in the minority.
In an attempt to lure fresh investment, Sylva, who was appointed as the country’s junior oil minister in August 2019, oversaw the approval of legislation that drastically changed the oil industry’s tax regime.
During his stint as minister, pipeline vandalism and petroleum theft brought Nigeria’s oil output to its lowest level in decades. Last year, Angola briefly surpassed Nigeria as the greatest oil producer and exporter in Africa.
