PROFILE: Jennifer Adighije, first NDPHC MD without leadership experience in power sector

Last week, President Bola Tinubu appointed Jennifer Adighije as the managing director (MD) and chief executive officer (CEO) of the Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC).

Adighije is expected to assume the role on Monday, stepping into the shoes formerly worn by Chiedu Ugbo, who occupied the office since August 2016.

She was born on April 15, 1983, to the Adighije family of Abia state. Her father, Chris Adighije, served as the senator representing Abia central senatorial district under the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) from 2003 to 2007. Chris defected to the All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2016 and is now a chieftain of the ruling party.

Adighije graduated from the University of Lagos with a B.Sc. in electrical and electronics engineering. She proceeded to bag an M.Sc. in wireless networks and telecommunications at Queen Mary University of London, and returned to Nigeria in 2006.

Her appointment to NDPHCA is not her first experience in the power sector. According to her LinkedIn profile, she started her career as a transmission maintenance engineer at the now-defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN).

From PHCN, she joined Globacom as an NSS specialist, after which she worked with Helios Towers Nig., a telecommunication infrastructure company, as the head of operations and planning.

Her time with Helios Towers ended on a sour note in 2010 after the company terminated her appointment over what it termed “poor performance”. Dissatisfied, Adighije sued her former employer.

The court ruled in her favour and ordered the company to pay her N13.5 million.

ADIGHIJIE THE ‘FASHIONPRENEUR’

Building on her longtime passion for handicrafts, Adighije founded House of Silk (HOS), a fabric retail and tailoring services company, in 2009. As a young girl, her fashion sense was apparent in how she styled herself. She would also purchase fabrics with her pocket money and cut out patterns for her dolls.

She was named among the finalists in the Young Designer Category of the MTN Lagos Fashion and Design Week Awards in August 2012.

She would later return to the civil service as a value engineer and cost controller in the procurement department of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). She served in that capacity from 2018 to September 2023, when she was appointed as senior special assistant (entrepreneurship development in communications, innovation, and the digital economy) to Tinubu.

As SSA, she worked under Bosun Tijani, the digital economy minister, advising and providing assistance to the president on entrepreneurship development in the digital economy.

The fashionpreneur got married to Obiora Okolo, a US-based medical doctor, in 2013.

Adighije loves reading, cooking, and making a social impact. She is a humanitarian and social-entrepreneurship advocate. She is a patron of Digi-Tech Empowerment Foundation for Youths, where she dedicates her time and resources to fostering digital inclusion by bridging access gaps for digitally vulnerable youths.

She is a member of the Nigerian Society of Engineers, a registered Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN) practitioner and a life member of the Rotary Club.

Adighije is currently in the second year of her doctoral study at the Catholic University of Murcia, Spain.

FIRST NDPHC MD WITHOUT LEADERSHIP EXPERIENCE IN POWER SECTOR

Adighije is taking the helm of affairs as the third MD in a company that requires extensive expertise and hands-on experience in the power sector.

Unlike her predecessors, Adighije has no prior leadership experience in the sector.

James Olotu, the pioneer MD, worked with the defunct National Electric Power Authority (NEPA), from where he was moved to the National Integrated Power Project (NIPP) in May 2006 as head of internal audits. Olotu was instrumental and deeply involved in the setting up of the NDPHC as a limited liability company to serve as the legal vehicle that holds the NIPP assets.

He played active roles in the initiation and construction of the ancillary electricity generation, transmission, and distribution projects. Upon the establishment of the company, he was made pioneer MD.

Ugbo, who succeeded Olotu, is an electric energy law specialist with over 30 years of experience and possesses extensive experience in electricity industry reform, power project documentation, and privatisation.

He served as an embedded legal consultant to the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE).

He also acted as a counsel in the transaction advisory team to BPE, where he actively contributed to and coordinated the legal work stream for the privatisation of 20 successor electricity companies created out of the erstwhile Power Holding Company of Nigeria Limited (PHCN).

Ugbo was senior special assistant to the president on power privatisation in the office of the vice president (OVP) under the Muhammadu Buhari-led administration. He was also the acting head of the advisory power team in the OVP.

Before joining the presidency, he was engaged under the USAID Power Africa Transaction and Reform Programme as an embedded adviser to Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Plc (NBET), providing legal support in the development of electric power contracts.