Exclusive Interview, Nigeria

PA: You are now in a highly visible national, as well as international role, has this spotlight affected your family and how have they
dealt with the transition?

H.E.: Since my days as Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice in Rivers State, we made the decision not to relocate the family. My appointment as Minister didn’t change that. So my wife has remained in her job with Accenture, and the kids in their various schools. My son is graduating this week [week of July 21] with a law degree, and we have largely kept the family stable, though it’s been challenging all the same.

PA: Contrary to insinuations in the early days about your suitability for this role, you have proved many skeptics wrong and exceeded even the expectations of those who believed in you. What’s the secret?

H.E.: A lot of people fail to understand that the position of the Minister is essentially supervisory. He is the CEO and he is required to use his best judgment to make decisions based on available options. The needed technical inputs are resourced by qualified experts working with him. As for me, my backgrounds in law practice and as Attorney General were very helpful. As an advocate I have had many clients in the oil and gas industry. So even before being made the Minister of Petroleum I was reasonably familiar with the Petroleum Act which is the overriding instrument of the industry.

Also, I learned as an Attorney General to focus on the critical issues and follow through with them. I have approached the ministerial appointment in the same way. On resumption, I needed to identify what the issues were: funding, refineries, local content, Niger Delta, and others. And I needed to investigate the underlying factors. For example, inadequate funding has been responsible in part for the declining production situation we find ourselves in now. I realized we needed to bring new thinking into it because it is a problem that has been with us for long. The result is the Incorporated JV (IJV) concept as a financing alternative, by leveraging off the assets of the JV Company. Let me say however, that if you look at the history of petroleum ministers in this country, non-petroleum background ministers have been the rule rather than the exception.

To read the interview with His Excellency Henry Odein Ajumogobia in its entirety, click here to view the article as it appeared in the August 2008 issue of Petroleum Africa.