Power sisters: How Amina and Aisha Maina are building cross-border influence from Nigeria

On 7 July, Amina Maina turned 50 and used the day to launch something new in Nigeria. Before guests, including former Senate president Bukola Saraki, she unveiled The CROWN Institute (Centre for the Representation of Women), which she founded.

President Bola Tinubu issued a statement describing her as a “distinguished businesswoman and energy sector leader” and “a worthy example of Nigerian women’s industry, excellence and capacity to lead in business and public service.”

Three weeks later, her sister, Aisha, 45, was named strategic adviser to a Caribbean intergovernmental body. A year earlier, she had signed a $40m deal to build a deep-water port in St Kitts. Last month, she became the first global ambassador for a pan-African women’s leadership network.

Together, the Maina sisters, born to a soldier father and an entrepreneurial mother, are expanding their business and economic footprint across Nigeria and beyond.

Amina: An oil trading veteran advising the president

Amina graduated in Business Administration from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, in 1998. That year, she began her national youth service at the Pipelines and Product Marketing Company, a subsidiary of the state oil company NNPC.

She subsequently worked in operations at Marc Rich Investments, traded crude oil on Aurora Energy Trading’s West Africa desk, and held senior business development positions at Energy Solutions Integrated Services and Ovlas Trading.

She joined MRS Oil and Gas as executive director of marketing in 2008 and became group executive director of supply and trading at MRS Holdings the following year. Her experience spans much of the downstream value chain, including trading, shipping, storage and retail. She helped restructure and expand MRS Group across six African countries and in Switzerland.

In June 2025, MRS Oil Nigeria announced that she would step down as a non-executive director with effect from 11 July 2025. “Her tenure has been marked by impactful transformation and unwavering dedication to the company,” it said.

Since then, Amina has chaired Eyrie Group, an Abuja-based company with interests in energy, agriculture, natural resources, investment and offshore and onshore services. Its flagship subsidiary, Eyrie Energy, established in 2006, trades in and distributes refined petroleum products in Nigeria and says it is expanding across West Africa, Europe and Asia through partnerships.

It is also moving upstream. In July, Eyrie Energy was among 31 companies that won 37 blocks in the 2025 licensing round, securing the onshore frontier block PPL 801.

Amina’s influence extends well into policymaking. She is one of 13 private-sector leaders on Tinubu’s 31-member Presidential Economic Coordination Council, inaugurated in July 2024, alongside influential business leaders Aliko Dangote, Tony Elumelu and Abdul Samad Rabiu.

She is also an independent council member of the Midstream and Downstream Gas Infrastructure Fund, which invests in gas transport, processing and use.

She has been on the board of the Nigerian Economic Summit Group since April 2021 and is now its Vice Chairman II. She also serves on the board of the Policy Innovation Centre, Africa’s first national-level behavioural initiative, which applies behavioural insights to improve the design and delivery of public policy and social programmes.

She is a founding member of the Women in Energy Network, where she serves on the board of trustees and previously served as vice president for Downstream & Midstream Oil and Gas. She mentors young professionals in energy and logistics and advocates for greater representation of women in the downstream sector.

In October 2025, she became an independent non-executive director of Okomu Oil Palm Company. She serves on the boards of Meristem, First Mutual Microfinance Bank, and the Policy Innovation Centre.

Outside Nigeria, Aminu chairs Next Gen Infraco, a Ghanaian company that builds and operates wholesale 4G and 5G networks for mobile operators and internet providers.

Aisha: An entrepreneur building a bridge across the Atlantic

Aisha has been building her own business for nearly two decades. She has served as MD/CEO of Aquarian Oil & Gas since March 2007 and as principal partner at Aquarian Consult since August 2008. Since January 2018, she has been group managing director of Phoenix Rising Holdings.

She is also GMD of Eyrie Group and Aquarian Energy Group, and founder of Gemini Integrated Commodities Trading Company. Together, these businesses span consulting, aviation, energy, agriculture and infrastructure.

Her best-known project is the Aquarian Consult Afri-Caribbean Investment Summit (AACIS), which she founded in 2025 to strengthen trade, investment and collaboration between Africa and the Caribbean. Following the March 2025 edition, she led a 120-member Nigerian trade delegation to St Kitts & Nevis, which was described as the first direct charter flight from Abuja to the Eastern Caribbean.

Through Gemini Integrated Commodities, she signed a $40m agreement, backed by the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), to build a deep-water port in St Kitts. The aim is to establish a direct trade corridor between Africa and the Caribbean. The deal was signed in July 2025 in Grenada, during the Afreximbank Afri-Caribbean Trade and Investment Forum, between the Government of St Kitts and Nevis and Afreximbank.

The port in Basseterre will have a Panamax berth. It will anchor a 10km² special economic zone for agro-processing, light assembly and bonded warehousing. The first container is expected to dock by the fourth quarter of 2028.

In March this year, the first commercial charter carrying more than 100 people from seven Caribbean countries landed in Abuja for AACIS 2026, according to organisers.

On 28 July 2026, the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States Commission appointed Aisha as a strategic adviser for Africa-Caribbean cooperation, embedding her within the Office of the Director General to shape policy frameworks that unlock trade, investment, and cultural linkages.

In September, she was named the first global ambassador of the African Women Leaders Network, a platform supported by the African Union and the United Nations. Her mandate includes developing partnerships, mobilising resources and expanding the network’s international reach.

A soldier’s discipline, a baker’s drive

Their father, the late Lt. Colonel Mohammed Lawan Maina, was a senior Nigerian Army officer who briefly served as military governor of Borno State from December 1989 to June 1990. His administration hosted Prince Charles and Princess Diana in Maiduguri in 1990 during their official tour of Nigeria.

“My parents were my biggest role models,” Amina said in a 2024 documentary by the Centre for Values in Leadership. Their mother, from the south, married their father and moved north. “My mom never worked formally for anybody, but I don’t recall a time when my mom was not busy,” she said.

Their mother began baking at home, then sold to neighbours and moved into supplies. Eventually she built her own bakery, “which to all intents and purposes at the time, was one of the biggest and most well-known,” Amina said. “That propelled me in life to say that you don’t sit down and do nothing … At every point in time in your life, you must be busy.”

From her father came something different. “He was in the military, so very disciplined, very regimented, but also very fair,” Amina said. “He always used to say to us, ‘In whatever you do in life, you must understand that you must work hard. You must understand that you must have integrity’.” (The Africa Report)