Governor Inuwa Yahaya of Gombe State has announced that the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC Ltd) has resumed crude oil drilling at the Kolmani oil field, located on the border between Bauchi and Gombe states.
He made this known during a two-day Interactive Session on Government-Citizens Engagement at Arewa House in Kaduna. The event, organised by the Ahmadu Bello Memorial Foundation, focused on assessing President Bola Tinubu’s performance in northern Nigeria.
Governor Yahaya recalled how President Tinubu, then a presidential candidate in 2022, was not originally invited to the flag-off ceremony of the drilling project during former President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration. However, Yahaya said he personally ensured Tinubu was invited under the APC platform.
“I believed that Buhari would start the project and someone else would continue it. President Tinubu promised to continue where Buhari stopped, and today he has fulfilled that promise,” Yahaya said.
According to the governor, after months of negotiation with security agencies, oil companies have now resumed operations at the Kolmani site. He expressed confidence that results will begin to show as early as next week.
Oil was first discovered in commercial quantity in the Kolmani River II Well in 2019. In 2022, drilling officially began, marking the first major oil exploration effort in northern Nigeria. The area is estimated to hold over a billion barrels of oil and 500 billion cubic feet of gas.
The NNPCL has said the project could bring in \$3 billion in investment, create jobs, and boost government revenue.
