The company also announced that Engr Effiong Okon will become Chief Executive Officer on August 1, 2026, succeeding Roger Brown, who has led the energy firm since August 2020.

The appointments were disclosed in a notice filed with the Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX) on Tuesday and signed by the company secretary, Edith Onwuchekwa.

Elumelu’s elevation to Chairman comes months after his company, Heirs Energies, acquired a 20.07% stake in Seplat Energy in a $500 million deal.

The transaction made Heirs Energies the single largest shareholder in the dual-listed energy company and was one of the most significant indigenous investments in Nigeria’s oil and gas industry in recent years.

His appointment follows a series of board changes that began earlier this year. In January 2026, Seplat appointed Elumelu as a Non-Executive Director after the resignation of Olivier Cleret De Langavant, who represented Maurel & Prom.

The French company had previously held the 20.07 per cent stake before selling it to Heirs Holdings and Heirs Energies.

Tony Elumelu will succeed Senator Udoma Udo Udoma, who is currently the chairman of Seplat board. The company said the transition marks “a new chapter of leadership” for the company as it continues to pursue growth opportunities across its business.

The company said Elumelu’s experience in corporate governance, institution building and value creation will support its ambition of building a resilient and globally competitive energy business.

Elumelu is the founder and chairman of Heirs Holdings, a pan-African investment company with interests across energy, power, banking, insurance, technology, real estate, hospitality and healthcare.

He is also the founder of Africapitalism, an economic philosophy that promotes long-term private sector investment as a driver of economic development across Africa.

Beyond Heirs Holdings, he chairs Transcorp Group and serves as Chairman of United Bank for Africa (UBA) Group.

Following the acquisition, Heirs Energies became Seplat’s largest shareholder with 20.07%. Other major shareholders include Petrolin Group with 13.77%, Sustainable Capital with 9.77%, Professional Support with 8.5% and Allan Gray Investment Management with 5.57%.

The change has strengthened indigenous participation in a sector where international companies have reduced their exposure to upstream assets.

Attention will also turn to the company’s incoming CEO, Effiong Okon, who will take over leadership in August.

Okon brings more than 35 years of industry experience and has held several senior positions within Seplat since joining the company in 2018. He first served as Operations Director before becoming New Energy Director and most recently Managing Director of ANOH Gas Processing Company.

Seplat credited him with playing a key role in delivering the ANOH gas project, which achieved first gas in January 2026. The project is regarded as one of Nigeria’s major gas developments and is part of initiatives to increase domestic gas supply.

The company said Okon’s operational experience and deep knowledge of the business position him to lead Seplat through its next phase of expansion, particularly as it continues to grow its gas business and explore new energy opportunities.

The leadership changes come at a time when Nigeria’s energy sector is undergoing significant transformation. Oil producers are adapting to the global shift towards cleaner energy sources, while local operators are taking on larger roles following the divestment of several international oil companies.

The Petroleum Industry Act has also changed the operating environment, increasing pressure on indigenous companies to expand production, improve efficiency and attract investment.

Last year’s acquisition by Heirs Energies was backed by African financial institutions, including Afreximbank and Africa Finance Corporation. The transaction was structured with an upfront payment of $248 million, while the balance was secured through an irrevocable letter of credit.

A further contingent payment of up to $10 million was tied to Seplat’s share price performance.

The deal followed a separate $750 million financing facility secured by Heirs Energies from Afreximbank to support its operations and expansion plans.

Documents obtained from the World Bank show the cancellation followed a formal request from the Federal Government.

Both parties agreed to discontinue the remaining financing under the Power Sector Recovery Performance-Based Operation after key reform targets failed to materialise.

The decision also brings the programme to an earlier close. Its end date was moved from June 30, 2027, to May 31, 2026.

According to the restructuring document, “The restructuring will result in the cancellation of the entire undisbursed balance in the amount of $717.7 million equivalent, and no further disbursements will be made under the Program following approval of this restructuring.”

The programme was introduced in 2020 as part of efforts to restore financial stability in Nigeria’s electricity sector, improve power supply and reduce the industry’s dependence on government support.

At the start, the World Bank approved about $752.5 million for the initiative. Three years later, after early reforms showed some progress, the bank approved an additional financing package of roughly $763.5 million to extend the programme and deepen reforms across the sector.

Together, both facilities were worth around $1.52 billion.

Still, the additional financing package struggled almost from the beginning.

The World Bank said the fall of the naira after the foreign exchange market liberalisation in June 2023 significantly raised electricity generation costs because gas prices are tied to the US dollar.

More than 70% of electricity supplied into Nigeria’s national grid comes from gas-fired plants.

At the same time, electricity tariffs were largely unchanged for most consumers. Only Band A customers saw tariff adjustments in April 2024.

That gap between high production costs and revenues collected from consumers widened rapidly.

According to the World Bank, tariff shortfalls climbed from N140 billion in 2022 to about N1.9 trillion annually in both 2024 and 2025.

The bank said the growing deficits placed heavy pressure on government finances and weakened the reform programme.

“Due to the mismatch between the electricity generation costs and the sector tariff revenues, the tariff shortfalls increased sharply in the last 3 years, moving from a low of N140bn in 2022 to a high of N1.9tn per year in 2024 and 2025, putting serious pressure on the limited Federal Government of Nigeria’s fiscal space,” the report stated.

The World Bank also pointed to deeper structural problems in the electricity sector, including weak performance by distribution companies, transmission bottlenecks, underused generation capacity, poor cost recovery, and high technical and commercial losses.

Those problems slowed implementation and made it difficult for Nigeria to meet conditions tied to further disbursements.

The bank said authorities failed to establish a credible financing framework capable of reducing tariff deficits over time.

“Recent financing plans have not fully identified sufficient sources of funding to cover tariff shortfalls, nor established a credible trajectory for their reduction,” the report stated.

Even so, the original phase of the programme achieved some measurable results before conditions worsened.

The World Bank said tariff shortfalls dropped by 71% between 2019 and 2022, falling from N581 billion to N166 billion.

Regulatory cost recovery improved from 56% to 94% during the same period, while electricity supplied to distribution companies increased by 13% between 2018 and 2021.

These encouraged the bank to approve additional financing in 2023.

However, implementation later stalled. The World Bank said none of the global indicators tied to the additional financing arrangement were achieved.

It also downgraded implementation progress under the programme to “Moderately Unsatisfactory.”

Financial records in the restructuring document show that only about 9% of the additional financing package was eventually disbursed.

Out of the programme’s total commitment of roughly $1.52 billion, around $796 million had been released before the cancellation, leaving $717.7 million undrawn.

The World Bank concluded that the programme’s structure no longer matched realities in Nigeria’s power sector.

“Taken together, these developments point to a misalignment between the design of the operation and the evolving implementation context,” the report stated.

The cancellation comes days after the Accountant-General of the Federation, Dr Shamseldeen Ogunjimi, warned that Nigeria could reconsider future World Bank loan arrangements if approval and disbursement delays continue.

Speaking during a meeting with a World Bank delegation in Abuja, Ogunjimi said Nigeria should not face long delays in accessing funds tied to development projects because the facilities are loans, not grants.

He said, “If approvals take more than six months, the Nigerian Government may no longer honour such arrangements.”

Ogunjimi also urged the World Bank to speed up approvals and disbursements to support Nigeria’s development priorities.

Energy companies also face familiar cost, performance and efficiency imperatives as well as the unprecedented social, political and regulatory demands for sustainability. All these factors combine to create a fairly volatile market.

The possibilities of untapped data

Can big data transform the efficiency of oil and gas exploration and extraction? Like so many other businesses, energy companies need to explore ways to access their growing volumes of untapped data to unlock their transformational potential.

Consider how easy it is to collect data compared to the amount which is actually used. An oil rig for example generates a huge amount of data daily from tens of thousands of sensors, but much, if not most, of that data goes unused.

Data which is not analysed and turned into actionable information represents lost opportunities to improve service, reduce waste and boost profitability throughout the supply chain. Given the scale of today’s energy challenge, if harnessed properly, this information could have major benefits for companies operating in the energy production and distribution industry, as well as for their customers and suppliers.

So, what’s preventing organisations in the energy industry from harnessing this valuable data?

The energy sector’s data processing challenges

Energy companies’ offshore and onshore operations are being set up in increasingly challenging and remote geographical locations. This means the connectivity hurdles they face are virtually unmatched. In the first half of 2019, 50% of all the newly discovered reserves were situated in deep water.

In reality, this means many new platforms are being established in places where cable or microwave connections are either impossible or too expensive to install, or where the level of on-site computing required to analyse large volumes of data cannot be maintained.

Anyone who’s ever managed an industrial process or road traffic network will be familiar with the concept of a bottleneck. In the energy industry’s case, the problem is a data bottleneck caused by insufficient broadband capacity to send large quantities of data to a processing centre with sufficient computing power.

Next generation connectivity

Fortunately, the ability to deliver real-time access to data without huge IT and network infrastructure costs and lengthy deployment times is now attainable with fast, high-throughput satellite communications.

Energy companies should therefore look to partner with a reputable solutions provider who can, with SES, deliver high-capacity end-to-end data services that are proven, robust and critically built on dedicated bandwidth.

A provider who can also offer global reach powered by SES’s proven and reliable geostationary (GEO) satellites, plus O3b MEO and O3b mPOWER middle earth orbit (MEO) constellations.

This next-generation connectivity offers low latency performance links across even the most remote locations and is providing the opportunity for the energy industry to turn previously untapped data across operations into business enhancing action.

This has resulted in Energy 4.0 emerging as the most direct route to achieving these goals.

Forward-thinking energy leaders are using powerful digital technologies such as cloud, the Internet of Things (IoT), big data information management, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) to optimise their energy production and sharpen their competitive edge.

They are building a future where energy cloud ecosystems will intelligently manage data from disparate sources, technologies, and partners to coordinate distributed, cleaner, two-way energy flows. However, the success of this depends on bringing together very different resources in a consistent and secure way.

Mines, wind and solar farms, energy consumers and prosumers, and more, all need to be visible, monitored parts of the intelligent energy ecosystem. Secure, resilient connectivity is at the heart of making this happen, particularly as the industry is pushed into increasingly remote and volatile environments.

Without the right connectivity, it is impossible to introduce the technology to capture, analyse, and action the data insights that will make the industry safer, more efficient, and more sustainable. 

Success built on connectivity

Solving the connectivity question should be a priority. Collecting data from all sides of the operation, including the edge, and delivering it to the cloud, can involve integrating satellite and IoT connectivity with fixed networks to ensure complete, useable data.

Moreover, energy operators need to create a federated and secure global network that can connect any region to core cloud services, to bring disparate sites and energy operators together.

Many Energy 4.0 technologies are only as good as the connections they are running on. In numerous situations, if the connection fails, work must stop completely, resulting in massive costs due to hours of lost production.

The security of the environment can also not be ignored. A big part of the Energy 4.0 evolution must be building security into the process by design. However, this will not be a ‘one size fits all’ solution.

The highly individual structures of each energy operator will need a bespoke assessment and security rollout and, potentially, a plan that brings expertise together from several security specialist providers.

A successful shift to digital energy is also strongly linked with the business need to increase sustainability. Consumer consciousness and regulation around how the energy sector uses scarce resources and generates carbon emissions is at an all-time high.

Prioritising sustainability and using digitalisation to harness more environmentally friendly production methods will set industry leaders apart. 

Overcoming roadblocks

Global energy producers share the same issues, concerns, and attitudes when it comes to achieving digital transformation.

Firstly, identifying the legacy equipment being used is a daunting prospect especially when a significant proportion of these are not even connected over ethernet. Invariably, each site operates using different technology.

This leads to operational inconsistencies where two parts of the same organisation could be operating on completely different equipment and connectivity.

Another challenge to overcome is equipping disparate, non-standard, often difficult to reach sites with edge compute capabilities. Sourcing reliable specialist compute equipment adds an extra layer of difficulty.

This is further compounded where there is explosive risk, so the equipment or enclosure surrounding it needs to be certified.

Identifying which team is most appropriate to lead digital transformation can be a struggle, particularly if teams have territorial, entrenched attitudes to their respective silos.

The task of extracting, capturing, and analysing data to inform decision-making about operations can appear huge when so many systems are still paper-based, with data stuck in silos.

Achieving effective digital transformation

While digital transformation will be different for every organisation, site, and method of production, a stepped approach can help with more effective guidance.

The journey to Energy 4.0 must start with a thorough understanding of where the business is currently. Any strategy needs a baseline to limit the unknowns that could hamper progress later down the line.

This requires a holistic look at the infrastructure, assessing each site individually to gauge its efficiency and connectivity potential.

Secondly, working out what is connected to what in the energy networks, and where there might be vulnerabilities or gaps, form an essential part of successfully connecting OT and IT. Most malware that gets into energy sites comes from the IT world, and many current energy production systems have vulnerabilities that make them susceptible to cyberattacks.

The next step in the process is getting the supporting infrastructure right. Digitalisation requires a network that is resilient and able to collect and process data locally, as well as one that can share data securely across the organisation and into the wider ecosystem.

As part of the network refresh, the organisation must identify where additional sensors would provide useful data and incorporate them. Then, it should evaluate how much processing power it will need locally and develop an edge compute strategy that will enable repeatable solutions. Blueprints are also essential to make sure infrastructure is integrated and designed to support the increasing number of IoT devices on various sites, and the increase in data that will follow.

Finally, the organisation must get insight data from its distributed assets. It should focus on creating a foundation on which to build more efficient processes by being able to quickly access data insights. Measuring asset status, usage, and sustainability and using Natural Language Processing (NLP) to mine unstructured data sources becomes essential.

Energy 4.0 is here. But it must be harnessed properly through an effective digital transformation strategy if its value is to be fully realised.