Diezani Alison-Madueke, minister of petroleum resources, says she has not committed any crime and is not seeking asylum, even though she stepped on big toes during her tenure.

Taking questions from the media in Abuja on Wednesday, Alison-Madueke — arguably the most controversial member of President Goodluck Jonathan’s cabinet — said her recent meeting with Abdulsalami Abubakar, former head of state, had nothing to do with speculations that she was looking for a “soft landing” from the incoming administration.

Here are our top six takes on Alison-Madueke comments.

On those corruption accusations

““I have not sought such assistance because I am not aware that I have been indicted of any crime that I will need a soft landing. Over the last four years, I have been severally and unfortunately accused and labelled in so many malicious and vindictive ways. I have explained these things and pushed back robustly on these accusations  and I have even gone to court on many of them. Yet they keep being regurgitated.”

She did “her best”

““I do believe that I have done the best for Nigeria in this job and I have attained many firsts in the history of oil and gas especially in the reforms that we have done. In this period of time, I have stepped on many big toes, particularly the toes of the cabals that were in the industry when we came in.”

The oil industry is more ‘Nigerianised’

“We have taken millions and in fact billions of dollars out of the hands of multinationals and their subcontractors and put them in the hands of Nigerians through the Nigerian Content. Hundreds of thousands of Nigerians have come into the oil and gas industry because of our reforms.”

What about the missing $20 billion?

“And $20 billion missing money for which PWC had done a report and the $1.48 billion which is not missing, which is actually money transferred by the NNPC to NPDC which is a subsidiary and NPDC has actually started making payments under my directives. I have said during our time that there are gaps in the NNPC and I said that openly.

The NNPC is the most open in its history

“But I can also say that at no time in Nigerian history in the oil and gas has the NNPC been as open and audited as it is today. It has been positioned to go forward in the industry. It is true that the revenue profile is not sustainable. But we have done our best and the Nigerian oil and gas sector is today in a better shape than it has ever been in terms of achievements that we have recorded.”

And, folks may only end up remembering the last line of this exchange

“In that bill are all the reforms needed to tear NNPC apart, make it a National Oil company, an equity share company through transparency, accountability and responsibility and reduce corruption in the industry. We did all theses and we put them in place to reduce corruption, so for me to be tagged with various tags of corruption, $10 million jet purchases, who buys jet for $10 million dollars for goodness sake?”