Malami Hopeful Of Victory In P&ID’s $10bn Case Against Nigeria

The Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami (SAN), has said that Nigeria can overturn the $10bn suit instituted by Process & Industrial Development in a London Court against the Federal Government.

The P&ID case has been scheduled for trial in the US in January 2023.

P&ID had dragged Nigeria to Court for alleged breach of contract, with a panel of three arbitrators voting 2-1 to award the company the full sum of its claim of $6.6bn, including interest totaling $9.6bn.

The country in 2010 under former President Goodluck Jonathan, signed the Gas Power Purchasing Agreement under which P&ID was to build gas processing facilities in Cross River State and the government was to supply wet gas up to 400 million standard cubic feet per day that will be processed to generate electricity.

But in 2012, the company began an arbitration process, alleging breach of contract.

In 2019, a London court ruled that P&ID can go ahead to seize Nigeria’s assets worth $9bn over a 2010 contract allegedly marred by secrecy.

The AGF said, “This has been a case in respect of perhaps arbitrary award around the sum of $10bn (which) was made against the interest of the Federal Government and then nothing was done by the previous government until after the right of the Federal Government to appeal the case elapsed and then the enforcement of judgement was being contemplated.

“Many years thereafter, the Federal Government instituted and filed an application for setting aside the enforcement and the first success recorded arriving therefrom.

“The order was made for the stay of enforcement of the judgement and this is unprecedented taking into consideration that even the time within which we are expected to appeal had elapsed.

“The court ordered that we should pay $200m as a condition for staying the order of execution of the judgement against the interest of the Federal Government, its assets and the economic interest.

“But then again, we challenged the order of the payment of the $200m and our objection to the deposit of physical cash was equally sustained- the second reason for celebration as far as the case is concerned.”