**Nigeria’s Acting President Goodluck Jonathan has sacked the head of the national oil company Mohammed Barkindo.**He will be replaced by Shehu Ladan, who was himself dismissed from the state-run NNPC by President Umaru Yar’Adua before he fell ill last November.
The BBC’s Caroline Duffield in Abuja says the move will be seen as evidence of Mr Jonathan’s determination to remould Nigeria’s political landscape.
He swore in a cabinet on Tuesday, two months after getting executive powers.
Our correspondent says news of Mr Barkindo’s sacking from the inefficient Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) took the country by surprise and will be read as an aggressively political act.
He had run the NNPC for just more than a year.
The appointment of Mr Ladan means that another important position has been filled by someone who now owes his loyalty to Mr Jonathan, our reporter says.
Sources in the presidency suggest it is an injection of fresh blood, an attempt to refocus the NNPC.
But our reporter says sceptics are already warning that the new managing director is an oil insider, steeped in the NNPC’s culture of corruption.
Just before the announcement, the acting president had sworn in members of his new cabinet, which included the country’s first female oil minister.
Deziani Allison-Madueke has swapped the mining portfolio for that of oil.
Nigeria is a major oil exporter and the oil ministry plays a major role in the country’s politics.
The new cabinet is expected to remain in place until elections due in 2011.
Mr Yar’Adua fell ill on 23 November last year and was flown to Saudi Arabia, where he stayed for three months.
Amid the continuing uncertainty over his condition, it was announced last month that next year’s presidential election could be brought forward by three months to January. This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.