Finally, the Federal Government on Monday and in far away United Kingdom won its claims against Process & Industrial Developments (P&ID) Limited.
The judgment was delivered after five years of legal fireworks.
A judgment delivered by Justice Robin Knowles of the Business and Property Court via email, on Monday held that P&ID obtained its multi-billion-dollar arbitration award against Nigeria by fraud.
P&ID was awarded a 20-year contract in 2010, to construct and operate a gas processing plant in southern Nigeria, as part of a wider plan to exploit Nigeria’s abundant reserves of gas.
After the deal collapsed, P&ID took Nigeria to arbitration in London and on January 31, 2017, was awarded $6.6 billion for lost profits – a sum which has swelled with interest to over $11 billion beginning from March 20, 2013.
With the interest rate fixed at seven per cent amounting to $1 million a day, the potential payment had accumulated to over $11 billion before the verdict.
Following the judgment, Nigeria applied for an extension of time and relief from sanctions. The application was granted by Ross Cranston, a judge of the Business and Property Courts of England and Wales, in September 2020, thereby returning the case to arbitration.
Nigeria had alleged that the gas deal was a scam conceived to defraud the country.
Lawyers representing the federal government told the court that P&ID officials paid bribes to secure the contract.
But P&ID denied the allegation and accused the Nigerian government of “false allegations and wild conspiracy theories.”
