UK company cleared to seize Nigerian assets

A British judge on Friday gave the green light for a small private firm to seize more than $9bn in assets from the Nigerian Government over a failed natural gas deal. The amount is the equivalent of one-fifth of the foreign reserves held by Africa's largest economy. The decade-long dispute pits the unheralded firm founded by two Irish business partners against the energy-rich nation of 200m. A Fin24 report notes that the 2010 deal between the Process and Industrial Developments Limited (P&ID) company and the Nigerian Government was meant to be a win-win for both sides. It provided for P&ID to ‘build a state-of-the-art gas processing plant to refine natural gas that Nigeria would receive free of charge to power its national electric grid’. P&ID intended to sell the by-products from the process on the global market for ‘profits in the billions of dollars'. The London court documents showed that the arrangement fell through in 2012 without P&ID ever breaking ground on the plant. It sued Abuja for breaching the agreement by failing to install the promised pipelines. Sahara Reporters notes that P&ID in 2013 won a $6.6bn arbitration case against the government but that figure rose to $9bn when the estimate of what the company could have earned over the course of the 20-year agreement was calculated. Nigeria attempted to nullify the award, insisting that it was not a case to be heard outside its shores but the British judiciary rejected the argument.

The government is to appeal the judgment. Punch reports that Solicitor-General Dayo Apata confirmed that the court 'granted P&ID’s enforcement application which converts the arbitration award secured by P&ID into a domestic UK judgment against Nigeria'. Apata, who also serves as the permanent secretary in the Justice Ministry said the department 'wishes to reassure the general public that Nigeria is considering all available options to appeal the decision, to defends its rights, and to protect the assets of the people of the federal republic'.