Stories by Ada Okafor

Former President Muhammadu Buhari has stated that if the country had lost its arbitration dispute with Process & Industrial Development (P&ID), it would have cost the country close to $15 billion.

In a statement titled: “A matter of principle” released Sunday, Buhari stated that during his tenure, he had tasked his former Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, and Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF), Abubakar Malami, to find a way out on the issue.
A Business and Property Court in London last week halted the enforcement of the $11bn arbitration award in favour of P&ID against Nigeria in a case marked CL-2019-000752.

In a judgment delivered by Justice Robert Knowles, it was held that the process through which P&ID secured a 2010 contract to build a gas processing plant in Calabar, Cross River State, was fraudulent.

Reacting, Buhari said: “Rarely in modern times can so few have tried to take so much from so many. If Nigeria had lost its arbitration dispute with Process & Industrial Development in a London court on 23 October, it would have cost our people close to USD15 billion.

“We won, and all decent people can sleep easier as a result. Justice Robin Knowles said Nigeria had been the victim of a monstrous fraud. But it was a close-run thing. As the judge said: “I end the case acutely conscious of how readily the outcome could have been different, and of the enormous resources ultimately required from Nigeria as the successful party to make good its challenge.

“But ordinary Nigerians never took the decisions that ended up before Justice Knowles. 

“Had Nigeria lost, it would have required schools not to be built, nurses not to be trained and roads not to repaired, on an epic scale, to pay a handful of contractors, lawyers and their allies – for a project that never broke ground.

“How did it get to this point? How did Nigeria prevail? Was this a one-off, or par for a shabby and distasteful course? What are the lessons for the future?”