THE head of the state-run Nigerian Gas Company has been fired as authorities pressed on with a purge of the country’s oil and gas industry, news reports said on Friday. Taiwo Idemudia, managing director of the Pipelines and Products Marketing Company, the state-run petroleum distribution company, was fired on Thursday by Jackson Gaius-Obaseki, managing director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, which oversees the entire Nigerian energy sector. The sacking brought to 72 the number of top officials in the NNPC and its subsidiaries dimissed in the past two weeks. The sector has long been mired by mismanagement and corruption and has underperformed for years.