President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has appointed Jennifer Adighije as the managing director (MD) and chief executive officer (CEO) of the Niger Delta Power H
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has appointed Jennifer Adighije as the managing director (MD) and chief executive officer (CEO) of the Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC).
Before her new assignment, Jennifer was the Senior Special assistant to Tinubu on Entrepreneurship Development in Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy.
Her appointment to NDPHCA is not her first experience in the power sector as 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 Nigeria, 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.
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. A member of the Nigerian Society of Engineers, NSE and a Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN) practitioner, Jennifer who used to be married to Obiora Okolo, a US based medical doctor is currently divorced.
Jennifer who is currently in the second year of her doctoral study at the Catholic University of Murcia, Spain 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.
Sources allege that her elevation from SSA to NDPHCA may perhaps be a pay back to her father, Abia Senator, Chris Adighije, a member of the second national assembly, chairman, governing council and pro-chancellor of the Federal University, Lokoja and more importantly, a staunch chieftain of the All Progressives Congress who worked assiduously for Tinubu’s victory at the polls.
