SOME people love to call her the female oil Sheikh of Nigeria. Others see her first coming as the first female oil or petroleum minister of Nigeria in decades some 40 years ago.

She definitely broke the jinx where males had dominated the ministry over the years, most especially, our brothers North of the country like Rilwan Lukeman and Professor Aminu Jubril, not to mention Gen. Muhammadu Buhari during the military era. Since her coming on board as the Petroleum Minister, she may have dazed many male chauvinists whose toes she may have stepped on with some of her progressive reforms within the oil industry.

But when the cabinet was first dissolved before it was reconstituted by President Goodluck Jonathan, some subterranean pressures were applied to stop her re-appointment by powerful foreign majors because she is insisting on local content policies in the Petroleum Industry Bill, PIB, with clauses which would hopefully open up the down and upstream sectors of the oil industry to Nigerians and the oil producing communities.

For those who have held the reins of petroleum business as a collective fiefdom for themselves and their cartel, Diezani Allison Madueke’s second coming seems to be a killer punch for their financial empire, which appears to be diminishing before their very eyes.

Several sponsored anti-Diezani accusations like the alleged sale of oil blocs to certain firms or interests had been levelled against her and she debunked them all.

Diezani recently addressed and debunked issues of oil blocs sale in an interview with THISDAY newspaper, Wednesday June 8, 2011, titled “Why we gave Oil Blocs to NPDC” and said Septa Energy never bought OMLs. She categorically denied reports that the oil mining licences- OMLs- 4, 38 and 41 were improperly and illegally assigned to international oil and gas company, Seven Energy International Nigeria Limited through its Nigerian subsidiary Septa Energy Nigeria Limited without open bidding, adding that the facts of the matter had been jumbled up “as no sale of oil blocs took place at all”.

She equally averred that the oil blocs remain assets of the Federal Government and that if they are to be sold, it has to be done in an open bidding according to rules guiding such transactions. The seemingly iron-fisted female oil sheikh of Nigeria reeled off the origin of the transactions. She went down memory lane this way: Shell Petroleum Development Company, SPDC, had decided to transfer ownership and operatorship of the three oil blocs to a consortium of two Nigerian companies and their international partner. The Anglo Dutch Company, according to Diezani, was the operator of the licences under a joint venture between NNPC (55 per cent),Royal Dutch Shell (30 per cent); Total Exploration and Production Nigeria limited (10 per cent); Nigeria Agip Oil Company (5 per cent).

She explained further that the agreement signed by Shell with the buying companies covered only its 30 per cent interest in the OMLs 4,38 and 41 which covers approximately 2,650 square kilometers in the North Western Niger Delta. The crude oil production in the area includes about 30 wells with aproduction capacity of approximately 50,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. In her testimony during the interview, Diezani said Shell did not have the right to transfer operatorship to the companies. The law is her forte : ‘By the law,once you divest of a bloc, as a multi-national, the operatorship automatically reverts to the government through NNPC and it is the prerogative of the NNPC to now assign that operatorship as it deems fit on behalf of the Federal Government of Nigeria.

Speaking with THISDAY Editors in Abuja, DIEZANI recalled thus: “In 2010 [NPDC] used to do 40,000 barrels per day. We sat down with the management and we asked them to prepare a strategic growth plan for NPDC, which they did. According to the growth plan, if we followed it in terms of moving assets or assigning certain assets to NPDC, by 2015 within the next four years, NPDC would move from a company that produces 40,000 barrels per day when we came in last year, but one that would be producing 265,000 barrels per day and that would place them in same league as the Brazilian PETROBRAS and PETRONAS of Malaysia”.

Sheikh Diezani had fought several battles within the first year of her assumption of duty as the first female Petroleum Minister. She successfully battled a similar issue, OML 119, in which AGIP had an oil service management contract with an indigenous oil partner and they now wanted to take over bloc. “The ministry intervened and after going through all the papers and issues involved and with the support of President Jonathan I was able to move bloc 119 to NPDC and within same period, NPDC raised its production from 40,000 barrels per day to 100,000 barrels per day because of the fresh assignment from block 119”.

The series of oil blocs issues continued and Diezani mentioned Seplat and Shell with blocs 438 and 441, and immediately assigned same to NPDC. The Minister exclaimed: “I have no idea when the story turned and I was now said to have sold it to the very people I had to fight before we could get the blocs assigned to NPDC”.

The return of Diezani portends well for the petroleum industry. She had fought some battles, mostly dirty battles against some self-seeking international oil cartels who are afraid that the arrival of this no-nonsense female oil sheik. The Bayelsa-born Amazon has come to sanitize and reposition the oil industry and to ensure that the benefits of the petroleum industry reach the indigenous participants who had been shut out from enjoying the booties of their God-given black gold for over 40 decades. The fear and return of Diezani is the beginning of the wisdom for foreign oil cartels like Shell and the rest.

She enjoys the unalloyed support of Mr President, who was once quoted to have spoken aloud to the effect that “how can foreign oil firms come here to dictate to Nigerians what is good for us”.

Diezani keep trudging on and Nigerians are with you. That fuel is within the reach of motorist in all parts of Nigeria is great kudos to your tireless efforts and what is happening to kerosene, the artificial scarcity, is part of the deep conspiracies by oil giants and their local collaborators, whose ownership of petroleum tankers across the country may be responsible for the phoney scarcity. Remain firm and focused and keep your nose clean at all times and avoid the booby -traps and filthy lucre lurking around the corners. I salute you for a job well done.

Mr. WILLY BOZIMO, a journalist,, wrote from Asaba, Delta State.