How WIEN members brought sparkle, vibrancy to NOGOF 2025
Sopuruchi Onwuka
The nomination and award of the premier Women in Leadership Award on Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Starzs Investments Company Limited, Ms. Iroghama Ogbeifun, amplifies the rising impact of women in the Nigerian energy industry.
The award came from not just the regulators of value generation in the industry; the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB), the recognition passed through a tight sift of quality evaluation which pushed off strong contenders in the star studded energy industry.
A number of qualities and accomplishments stand out Ms Ogbeifun for the award; and The Oracle Today reports that Iroghama has a basketful of very significant maritime and petroleum industry awards that recognize her stallion strides in the field of business wins and corporate leadership. She currently holds three challenging corporate portfolios as the Vice Chairman of Starz Investments Limited, Managing Director of Starz Gas Limited and also Managing Director of Starz Investment Limited. Many simply describe her position in Starz Investment Limited as Vice Chairman/Managing Director. Others recognize how mutually exclusive and separately challenging both positions can be.
The recognition of Iroghama for the honor is also a marker of not just her personal accomplishments as successful business manager; it extends to the solidity and quality of the broader support base that enriches its members with mentorship, experience, knowledge and crossbreed of ideas: The Women in Energy Network (WIEN).
Checks by The Oracle Today show that nearly all the nominees for the Women in Leadership Award are members of WIEN or on the staff of its corporate members, showing the spreading influence of the group in building capacity among women in the industry and also empowering its members with requisite efficiencies and capabilities for delivering sturdy leadership that delivers the right commercial results.
It is also important to note that the award ceremony is hosted by a team of eminent industry technocrats as part of processes to evaluate the palpable impacts of the programmes and sundry measures so far deployed in the implementation of laws and regulations evolved by the government in realizing key objectives of the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Content Development (NOGICD) Act 2010.
The event is incubated in a bigger and broader Nigerian Oil and Gas Opportunity Forum (NOGOF), a fair that provides road show opportunities for players in the industry to create awareness on upcoming projects, solutions, evolving innovations and services that form the domestic energy business climate.
NOGOF is organized by fastest rising industry consultancy form, Jake Riley Limited, which is led by founding members of WIEN, Mrs Funmi Ogbue.
Mrs Ogbue’s NOGOF event indirectly provided the podium for recognition of industry excellence where Iroghama now stands tall (literally) among eminent achievers in the industry.
Besides Funmi and Iroghama, the NCDMB which hosted both NOGOF and the Champions of Nigerian Content Awards had tapped into the ideas and strength of WIEN by engaging critical members of the group in organizing both events in parallel, simultaneously and successfully.
Several WIEN members including the Chairman of Petroleum Contractors Association of Nigeria, Ms Rosario Osabese, were resource persons at NOGOF, providing powerful insights that translate to valuable policy propositions.
The overall presence of WIEN through its members in shaping one of the industry’s deal making events point at the ever growing capacity of female professionals in making strategic contribution to realization of prime national economic aspiration in the energy industry.
WIEN has persistently and stridently demanded equal opportunity, without any gender competition, for qualified women to take greater roles in government and corporate leadership of the industry. And the NCDMB which is evidently leading government’s regulatory agencies in efficiency has recognized and continued to utilize the value of female capacity in realizing its goals.
