
By Danlami Nasir Isah
Funmi Ogbue is the Managing Director of Zigma Ltd an Oil and Gas Service company providing engineering, procurement, and construction services. She is also the founder of Jake Riley with its focus on public sector transformation.
As the founder of Zigma, Funmi has taken what began as an oil and gas service company to a full-blown exploration and production company positioned to take advantage of the current commercial and regulatory environment, operate in a lean and mean manner and extract value from all opportunities. Zigma recently acquired commercial interest in a marginal field opportunity in Nigeria and has a cautious appetite for bigger E&P opportunities. Zigma is a contractor to Shell, Nigerian Agip Operation Company, Nigerian Agip Exploration, and NAPIMS. As well as a member of WE Connect International and Project 100, a Ministry of Petroleum Resources and NCDMB initiative.
Funmi grew up in a military family moving from one military barracks to the other all over Nigeria (Makurdi, Enugu, Kaduna, Zaria, Lagos and Ado-Ekiti) and in Alabama US and Aldershot UK whilst her military police father was serving in the Nigerian Army.

She was educated by all arms of the military; Army children school, Airforce primary school and Navy secondary schools. However, after her secondary education, she came into civilian life and the University of Lagos where she obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Sociology between 1988 and1992.
Thereafter, she attended the University of Manchester for a Master of Science (M.Sc.) degree in Organisational Change and Development in 2005.
Funmi has worked in the local and international landscape garnering experience largely in FMCG, International Development, Consulting, oil & gas and power industries. Starting out in Banking as a youth corp member in Grindlays Merchant Bank, to a sales role in Waxtall Logo Mats, to her first job in the Oil Industry in Abacan Resources, a Canadian Oil Company, then on to Nexen (formerly known as Canadian Occidental Petroleum), to Shell Nigerian E&P, British American Tobacco Ghana and Nigeria, and Mercer Consulting in the UK.
Funmi’s first job in the oil and gas sector started with Abacan who were the technical partner to Alfred James Petroleum, Amni Petroleum, Yinka Folawiyo Petroleum (YFP) that made discoveries in commercial quantities. She started off as the PA to the MD Wade Cherwayko, a geologist and also reported to Tunde Folawiyo the MD of YFP Petroleum. By the time she left Abacan in 1998 for Nexen, the company was already producing 50,000 bbls of oil per day.
In Nexen, Funmi started off as a human resources analyst, then a budget and planning coordinator, and finally a new ventures analyst. Nexen was a much bigger Canadian company and she spent a lot of time in their UK and Canadian Operations working on several high-profile projects including the development of the Ejulebe Field on OML 109 (which was done in partnership with Prince Arthur Eze) and the giant Ukot discovery on OPL 222 (a partnership with Elf Petroleum). As New Ventures Analysts she led the team of Canadian experts to review the Niger Delta Basin to seek out partnership opportunities.
She left Nexen in 2001 for Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company Limited (SNEPCO), Lagos where she was first the competence development adviser and later the head of diversity, inclusivity and change management. In the latter role, she had the responsibility of working with the organisation to improve diversity targets which included Gender, Ethnicity etc. Funmi learnt a lot in Shell, working with Global teams, on Projects and on industry committees in Nigerian Association Petroleum Explorationists (NAPE), OPTS and others.
With decades of cumulative experience working with multinational organizations and associating with professionals in the sector, Funmi felt it was time to put in those experiences to fill some gaps in the sector. Consequently, she established Zigma Limited, an Engineering, Procurement, and Construction Company (EPC) and focused on Oil and Gas Services.
In 2012, Funmi started Zigma, initially focused on waste management and soil remediation but added service lines to join the long list of companies that compete on the Nigeria Petroleum Exchange (Nipex), and Ariba trading platforms.

To date, Zigma has successfully executed projects for NPDC, Shell, Agip, IDSL, Napims, OGFZA, Total and with OEM’s and International Service Companies such as Korean S&W Corp, Valve Italia, Halliburton, Flo trend USA etc.
The company which began as an oil and gas service company has turned to a full-blown Exploration and Production (E&P) company positioned to take advantage of the current commercial and regulatory environment, operate in a lean and mean manner and extract value from all opportunities. Zigma recently acquired commercial interest in a marginal field opportunity in Nigeria and has cautious appetite for bigger E&P opportunities.
Zigma is also a member of WE Connect International, Women President Organisation and has been selected as a member of Project 100, a Ministry of Petroleum Resources and NCDMB initiative.