President Bola Tinubu has officially sworn in renowned economic reform strategist Joseph Tegbe as Minister of Power and veteran career diplomat Ambassador Sola Enikanolaiye as Minister of State for Foreign Affairs.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Monday officially administered the oath of office to Mr. Joseph Olasunkanmi Tegbe as the new Minister of Power and Ambassador Sola Enikanolaiye as the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs.
The swearing-in ceremony, held at the Council Chambers of the Presidential Villa in Abuja, follows the strategic departures of former Foreign Affairs Minister, Yusuf Tuggar, and former Power Minister, Chief Adebayo Adelabu, both of whom resigned to advance their respective political careers.
President Tinubu’s subsequent nominations were rigorously screened and cleared by the Nigerian Senate on Wednesday, May 6, 2026.
The executive cabinet shake-up brings two high-caliber technocrats with decades of public and private sector experience into critical frontline portfolios. The administration seeks to aggressively stabilize national electricity grids and re-engineer Nigeria’s economic diplomacy on the international stage.
“The short event took place at the Presidential Villa in the presence of the ministers’ spouses and senior government officials,” the presidency confirmed.
The newly minted Minister of Power, Joseph Tegbe, is a native of Ibadan, Oyo State, widely respected as an expert in fiscal structural adjustments and complex stakeholder engagement. With over 35 years of elite professional footprint across Africa, Tegbe enters the power ministry with a rare mix of engineering logic and institutional restructuring expertise.
Tegbe graduated with a First-Class honors degree in Civil Engineering from Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), later obtaining a Master’s in Business Administration (MBA) from Switzerland and a Master’s in Public Administration (MPA) from the University of Birmingham.
Before his cabinet elevation, Tegbe was a Senior Partner and Head of Advisory Services for KPMG in Africa. In that capacity, he engineered several presidential-level reforms, managed subnational growth roadmaps, and consulted for apex market entities including the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading (NBET), the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Shell, and General Electric.
Complementing the cabinet’s technical depth, Ambassador Sola Enikanolaiye, hailing from Igbagun in Kogi State, takes over the reins as Minister of State for Foreign Affairs.
Enikanolaiye is a consummate diplomat who achieved a First-Class degree in Political Science from Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, alongside a Master’s degree in International Law and Diplomacy (MILD) with Distinction from the University of Lagos.
Enikanolaiye’s appointment marks a triumphant return to the ministry where he spent 35 years as a career officer, climbing the bureaucratic ladder from 1982 until his retirement as the ministry’s Permanent Secretary in August 2017.
Throughout his distinguished diplomatic journey, he served in high-profile bilateral and multilateral outposts, including Addis Ababa, Belgrade, Ottawa, London, and New Delhi.
Prior to this ministerial deployment, Ambassador Enikanolaiye served inside the State House as the Senior Special Assistant to President Bola Tinubu on Foreign Affairs and International Relations within the Office of the Chief of Staff.
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