By Danlami Nasir Isah
Born in Bauchi, Bala Wunti is a thoroughbred oil and gas industry professional. He is a graduate of Chemistry from the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, with an MBA in Marketing from Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi, and a Postgraduate Diploma in Management from the same institution.
Wunti joined NNPC in 1994 as a Production Programming Officer at the Eleme Petrochemical Complex, Eleme, Port Harcourt, Rivers State. Between 1998 and 2004, he served as the Assistant Chief Market Research Officer, Marketing Department, Commercial Division, Eleme Petrochemical Limited, Port Harcourt.
Between 2004 and 2010, he served as the Head of Market Research, Brass LNG Limited, Lagos. Furthermore, between 2013 and 2015, Wunti rose to the position of Senior Special Advisor, Technical, to the Group Managing Director, where he managed a dynamic team of over forty (40) personnel, rendering technical and business advisory as well as stakeholder management services to the GMD.
Also, between 2015 and 2016, Wunti served as the General Manager, NNPC Efficiency Unit; and between 2016 and 2017, he was the General Manager / Technical Advisor, Downstream to the GMD, NNPC.
From 2017 to 2019, he was the Group General Manager, NNPC Corporate Planning and Strategy and, in 2019, he was appointed the Managing Director, Petroleum Products Marketing Company.
While at PPMC, Wunti was the ‘special agent’ that was tasked by the Group Managing Director, Mallam Mele Kyari, to handle the famous Operation White Project, a critical transparency squad of an 89-man monitoring team drawn from different downstream related agencies and security outfits for the purpose of tracking the movement of petroleum products in and out of the country, including importation and distribution, in order to check the activities of white product smuggling, hoarding, and other sharp practices.
Under Wunti’s leadership of Operation White, he ensured that petrol scarcity, especially during yuletide period, was a thing of the past. His team also was able to achieve a remarkable reduction in the quantity of petrol claimed to be consumed in the country by more than a quarter of the official figure.
It was in recognition of his resourcefulness as one of the strong pillars supporting the GMD’s quest to deliver dividends to the real owners of NNPC, who are the over 200 hundred million Nigerians, that led the GMD to appoint him as Group General manager, NAPIMS, in March 2020.
Before his foray into these roles, Bala was Head of Market Research at Brass LNG (2004 -2010), Assistant Chief Market Research Officer, Eleme Petrochemicals (1998 -2004) and Manager Chemicals, Import & Export, Doma Chemicals Lagos (1990 -1991), amongst other roles.
With almost three decades of experience in the oil and gas industry, Bala Wunti has led projects covering high impact commercial negotiations and dispute resolution in the Nigerian deep-water production sharing contracts (PSCs); corporate and business unit strategy development; business modelling and transformation journey navigation as well as profit improvement/cost optimization programmes; contract /sales agreements negotiation; Oil, LNG, LPG & NGL markets trend & analysis; change management/ culture architecting and embedding, amongst others.
A diligent and proactive oil and gas industry manager, Wunti possesses extensive experience in complex commercial contract negotiations, strategy development, contract management and business/economic modelling, having held technical, commercial, managerial and executive positions in different business units in NNPC.
He also holds membership of key oil industry associations, including the Nigerian Gas Association, National Institute of Marketing of Nigeria, Polymer Institute of Nigeria and Chemical Society of Nigeria.
Wunti has a proven track record in energy diplomacy, international coordination, and relationship management as the Nigeria National Representative in the Gas Exporting Countries’ Forum. He is married with children.