President Bola Tinubu has written to the Nigerian Senate seeking the screening and confirmation of Taiwo Oyedele as Minister of State for Finance, replacing Doris Uzoka-Anite.
The letter was read during plenary on Tuesday by the President of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio.
Until his nomination, Oyedele, who hails from Ikaram in Akoko area of Ondo State, served as Chairman of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms, where he played a key role in overhauling Nigeria’s tax system.
The 50-year-old economist, accountant and public policy expert began his academic journey at Yaba College of Technology, where he obtained a Higher National Diploma in Accountancy and Finance. He later earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Applied Accounting from Oxford Brookes University.
Oyedele also completed executive education programmes at London School of Economics, Yale University, Gordon Institute of Business Science and the Harvard Kennedy School.
He spent 22 years at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), joining the firm in 2001 and rising to become Fiscal Policy Partner and Africa Tax Leader.
Oyedele is also a professor at Babcock University in Ogun State and a visiting scholar at the Lagos Business School.
In a separate request, Tinubu also asked the Senate to confirm former senator Magnus Abe as Chairman of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), following the resignation of Gbenga Komolafe.
The President further nominated Engineer Paul Yaro Jezhi, a former chairman of the Trade Union Congress in Kaduna State, and Sunday Adebayo Babalola, a former deputy director at the defunct Department of Petroleum Resources, as non-executive commissioners.
Akpabio subsequently referred the nominations to the Senate Committee on Petroleum Upstream for further legislative action.
