About

The expert in-house legal department at Oando, made up of ten lawyers and an insurance advisor, is led by chief legal officer Ngozi Janice Okonkwo, who also oversees an insurance advisor. It manages the company’s corporate and commercial legal affairs including its subsidiaries including, litigation, due diligence, tax, contracts and other legal opinion crucial to the management of the business. The department has changed in size and composition in the last couple of years due to divestments of the group’s subsidiaries in its downstream, midstream and oil services businesses. Okonkwo identifies that, ‘the divestments provided a unique opportunity for the team’s development of highly specialised transaction skills as some of the features of the downstream divestment in particular were novel in Nigeria. The department has shown its ability to do more and beyond the ambit of core legal work’. In February 2018, the legal department solely managed the divestment of one of the group’s private air planes which included corporate finance, risk and basic accounting. Since 2016, new members have been added to the team to address increasing demand for legal services within the group. The department has since become even more efficient and deploys technology for most administrative tasks as well as software to improve legal research and development. A major achievement for the legal team was advising on the completion of the sale of Oando’s entire participating interest in OML 125 and 134 to Nigerian Agip Exploration at the end of 2017. The scope of the legal team’s services included the review of the sale and purchase agreement, regular project updates, risk management and drafting of other documentation, all without support from external counsel, saving the company at least US$100,000 in legal fees. Okonkwo identifies the strengths of the team: ‘the department’s core ethos is ensuring corporate long term sustainability through the provision of professional, quality, efficient and timely legal services. We focus on the “wow” factor and ensuring that we consistently exceed expectations’.