Career Biography

Defolu has over 25 years post qualification experience and is a founding member of FIRST Exploration and Petroleum Development Company Limited, where he has been General Counsel since the inception of the company in July 2012. Defolu has led FIRST E&P and its legal function to successfully acquire interests in five Oil Mining Leases in Nigeria with current total production of about 60,000 barrels of oil per day.

Defolu is in current negotiations for FIRST E&P (together with other partners in a joint venture consortium) to acquire the 100% shareholdings in the Nigerian entity of a major international oil company (Nigerian Government approval recently obtained in December 2024); and was involved in the Nigeria 2024 Bidding Round process, where he managed the process which led to FIRST E&P acquiring two (2) deep sea blocks, Offshore Nigeria.

During his career, Defolu has worked with a major Nigerian commercial law firm (Aluko & Oyebode) and an international oil company (erstwhile BG Group Plc, now part of Shell) in the UK, Singapore, China and Nigeria, where he gained valuable experience to navigate and resolve challenging issues in varied sectors during the last two decades plus. Defolu is an expert on commercial upstream matters, procurement matters on offshore developments, anti-corruption matters and other matters within the oil and gas value chain.

Defolu holds a Bachelor of Laws Degree from the University of Lagos, is qualified from the Nigerian Law School, and holds a Master of Laws Degree from the University College London.

How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crises, and how does your legal strategy align with the broader business strategy to ensure the organisation’s resilience?

My broad approach in managing periods of instability/crises is to mitigate any potential liabilities to the barest minimum and put in place measures to stop or resolve the crises quickly with external assistance from specialist law firms or consultants. The legal strategy is built to align with the business strategy with paramount focus on how to achieve the objectives of the organisation optimally with no bottlenecks/liabilities whilst navigating any challenges which may arise via out of the box thinking or bespoke solutions.

In your opinion, what are the main trends affecting your work now?

In the Nigerian oil & gas sector, regulatory issues due to implementation of the Petroleum Industry Act 2021 and its plethora of regulations, political issues with obtaining regulatory approvals and issues with performance of vendors in our offshore operations are the main trends impacting my work.

What strategic priorities are guiding your legal team into 2025?

Reduction to the minimum of vendor performance related issues, quick navigation of regulatory issues to enhance operations and by providing legal advice to the business at the most reasonable costs