‘Nigeria no longer held hostage’ — Tinubu lauds victory in P&ID case

President Bola Tinubu has lauded Nigeria’s success in the $ 11 billion Process & Industrial Developments (P&ID) Limited arbitration award.

The victory on Monday ended the legal laps Nigeria has been into since January 2017 when a $6.6 billion fine was imposed on the country over a failed gas processing contract.

With the interest rate fixed at seven percent amounting to $1 million a day, the potential payment had accumulated to over $11 billion before the verdict.

Nigeria had filed an appeal against the enforcement of the arbitration award and the UK commercial court granted the country the relief in September 2020, returning the matter to the high court for trial.

The country’s legal team argued that there was overwhelming evidence that the contract and the arbitration award had been procured through “an audacious fraud on Nigeria”.

The legal team also argued that the award should be set aside, citing the trials and convictions of some of the actors for corruption and money laundering as evidence of graft on an “industrial scale”.

Earlier on Monday, Robin Knowles, justice of the Commercial Courts of England and Wales, upheld Nigeria’s prayer on the ground that the award was obtained by fraud.

In a statement released by Ajuri Ngelale, special adviser to the president on media and publicity, Tinubu said the verdict has liberated the country from unjust economic malpractice.

“This landmark judgement proves that nation-states will no longer be held hostage by economic conspiracies between private firms and solitarily corrupt officials who conspire to extort and indebt the very nations they swear to defend and protect,” the president said.

“Today’s victory is not for Nigeria alone. It is a victory for our long exploited continent and for the developing world at large, which has for too long been on the receiving end of unjust economic malpractice and overt exploitation.”

Tinubu commended the Nigerian legal team and acknowledged the roles of the federal ministry of justice and the office of the attorney-general of the federation in defending country’s interest in the case.