Nigeria's state oil firm, NNPC Limited, has achieved a remarkable financial turnaround, reporting a profit after tax of $15 billion and revenue of $34.5 trillion for 2025. This significant improvement comes after decades of inefficiency and fiscal haemorrhaging. The company's Group Chief Executive Officer, Engr Bashir Bayo Ojulari, has been instrumental in driving this change, implementing a culture of cost compression and operational auditing.
Under Ojulari's leadership, NNPC Limited has undergone significant reforms, shifting its focus from political patronage to bottom-line accountability. The company has reduced general and administrative expenses by 25 per cent and increased operating cash flow by 16 per cent to $12.8 trillion. Additionally, Ojulari has led an aggressive debt recovery drive, reclaiming billions in overdue liabilities and allowing the company to reverse historical provisions for bad debts.
The financial discipline implemented by Ojulari has provided the capital foundation needed to accelerate Nigeria's critical energy infrastructure development. NNPC Limited has made significant progress on several strategic projects, including the 614-kilometre Ajaokuta–Kaduna–Kano pipeline, designed to transport 2.2 billion cubic feet of gas daily across northern industrial corridors. The company has also successfully executed the complex technical crossing of the River Niger on the Obiafu–Obrikom–Oben pipeline.
The Petroleum Industry Act of 2021 has played a crucial role in NNPC Limited's transformation, allowing the company to operate independently under the Companies and Allied Matters Act. This has enabled NNPC Limited to pay over $22 trillion in taxes, royalties, and dividends to its sovereign shareholder in 2025 alone. The company has also established an unprecedented precedent of corporate transparency for a West African state enterprise, subjecting its financial reports to strict international auditing standards.
Institutional reform has gone hand in hand with human capital transformation under NNPC Limited's corporate philosophy, The NNPC Way. Ojulari has injected over 1,000 young professionals into the organization's core operations, deploying them to digitize field workflows and streamline asset management. The company has also prioritized genuine equity, elevating women into 23 per cent of executive leadership roles across NNPC Limited.
NNPC Limited's focus on fiscal ingenuity is evident in its radical restructuring of the downstream sector. The company has abandoned decades of sovereign-funded turnaround maintenance projects, instead introducing the Technical Equity Partnership framework. This framework has brought in international technical partners who take minority equity stakes and assume direct operational management, tying capital investment directly to plant uptime and profitability.
NNPC Limited's strategic interventions serve a clear long-term objective: preparing the company for a historic Initial Public Listing on international stock markets. Ojulari is systematically aligning the group's financial reporting, subsidiary balance sheets, and governance structures with global investment standards. The company has a $60 billion capital expenditure roadmap designed to lift crude and condensate output to 2.0 million barrels per day and gas production to 10 billion standard cubic feet per day by 2027.
Key points
- NNPC Limited reports $15 billion profit after tax and $34.5 trillion in revenue for 2025.
- The company's financial turnaround is attributed to the leadership of Engr Bashir Bayo Ojulari, who has implemented a culture of cost compression and operational auditing.
- NNPC Limited is preparing for a historic Initial Public Listing on international stock markets, with a $60 billion capital expenditure roadmap in place.
