HALL OF FAME 2013 DAZZLING Diezani Allison-Madueke, Minister of Petroleum & Resources
Born on December 6th 1960, the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Allison-Madueke is a woman with steely will for change in leadership. Her Commitment to help bring a better order in Nigeria has elicited a bundle of mixed feelings from across national and international boundaries.
She has served as a Minister of Transport and that of Mines and Steel Development at different times before her appointment as Minister of Petroleum Resources. Under her leadership, President Goodluck Jonathan signed the Nigerian Content Act, which aims to increase the percentage of Petroleum industry contracts that are awarded to indigenous Nigerian businesses a reaction to the domination of the sector by foreign operators.
Under her leadership too, the Federal Government planned to remove state subsidies on fuel prices. She has supported the discontinuation of the subsidy on the grounds that it poses a huge financial burden on the government, disproportionately benefits the wealthy and encourages inefficiency, corruption and diversion of scare public resources away from investment in critical infrastructure .
Diezani was prepared for leadership sojourn by obeying the principle of incubation, as she studied architecture in England and returned to Nigeria and joined Shell Petroleum Development Corporation. After her MBA in Cambridge University in April 2006, She was appointed first female Nigerian Executive Director in Shell. Today, she is the first woman to hold the position of Minister of Petroleum Resources in Nigeria. In October, 2010 she became the first woman to head a country delegation at the annual OPEC conference.
One key advise from her that every woman would want to hear is “on working in male-dominated sectors, she warned the young women she mentored while at the shell to change their model of thinking.”
One of the most powerful cabinet members in President Jonathan’s regime, you may say, she is a bundle of inspiration to younger women and by this a member of 2013 Class of MMS Plus’Woman of Fortune Hall of Fame.
