Dangote oil refinery and petrochemicals have appointed David Bird as director general of his petroleum and petrochemical division, a decision that marks not only a change in critical leadership for African private refinery, but also aroused a conversation on the capacity of Nigerians for the main management positions.
Bird, a seasoned British oil director, assumed the role in July 2025, providing decades of experience in high -level global industry. He spent almost 20 years with Shell, supervising some of his most complex operations, including the Landmark Prelude Floating GNL installation in Australia – the first of the genre in the world. Later, he assumed higher positions at Oman’s Duqm Refinery and the Australian energy giant Santos Ltd, where he directed the production operations and the efforts of the supply chain.
With diplomas from the Imperial College London and the University of Stanford, Bird has now been responsible for directing the Dangote refinery through its critical growth phase – an era when Nigeria put on the refinery to finally facilitate its chronic dependence on fuel import, stabilize local supply and position itself as a fuel expression nation.
Register For TEKEDIA Mini-MBA Edition 18 (September 15 – December 6, 2025)) Today for early reductions. An annual for access to Blurara.com.
Tekedia Ai in Masterclass Business open registration.
Join Tekedia Capital Syndicate and co-INivest in large world startups.
Register For Tekedia ai lab: From technical design to deployment.
In a LinkedIn post quoted by S&P Global, Bird is committed to focusing on “maximization of operational production and commercial competitiveness”, while looking at expansion in other African markets.
But the appointment of Bird also reopened an uncomfortable conversation on the reason why, after more than 60 years of first producer of African oil, Nigeria seems unable to produce leadership for its most strategic downstream project. There seem to be deep concerns concerning the domination of foreign professionals in the most ambitious industrial enterprise in Nigeria and the wider implications for indigenous capacity in the oil and gas sector.
The chatter of the industry quickly turned to skill issues – or the lack – with criticism saying that the leadership structure of the refinery, now firmly in the hands of expatriates, indicates an overwhelming act of the training, management and surveillance capacities of Nigeria. Many have underlined the failure of the decades of public refineries – in Warri, Port Harcourt and Kaduna – as proof that the country does not have the expertise to manage a complex installation of the Dangote scale.
These installations managed by the State have swallowed billions of dollars in remedying maintenance projects failed since the 1990s, with little or no production to show. None has produced large -scale refined fuel in more than two decades.
In this context, the appointment of BIRD is based on operational credibility and the competence required to manage a project of $ 19 billion.
Foreigners were at the head of Dangote’s oil ambitions from the start. Edwin Devakumar, an Indian national, is vice-president of oil and gas at the Dangote Group since March 1, 2024, supervising the strategic orientation and the construction of refining operations. Devakumar, who has worked with the group for more than two decades, is one of Aliko Dangote’s most reliable lieutenants and played a central role in engineering, design and planning of refinery.
The refinery itself – located in the Lekki free trade area, Lagos – is the largest refinery unique in the world, with a treatment capacity of 650,000 barrels per day. Its complex houses 435 MW of electricity production capacity, a fertilizer plant, petrochemical units and an integrated export terminal. He began to produce diesel and aviation fuel in 2024, petrol production starting in September of the same year.
With its purpose of dominating the Nigerian oil market and considerably reducing petrol imports, the Dangote group has announced that it would deploy 4,000 trucks powered by natural gas (GNC) tablets to move fuel through Nigeria from August 15.
Meanwhile, Aliko Dangote continues to continue international agreements, including a partnership with the first marketing product of product marketing LLC, based in the United States, to export petrochemics and a joint venture with the Emirati G42 company to build a major data center in Abu Dhabi, highlighting the global footprint and globalization strategy.
Although the perspective of having a non -Nigerian management team leading the country’s flagship refinery project has not been seated with a lot, the biggest question is whether Nigeria is ready for recalibration which will produce competent indigenous hands in its oil sector.
