Nigeria wins compensation court case against British firm Process and Industrial Developments

NIGERIA has won its legal compensation battle with British company Process and Industrial Developments (P&ID) that had seen the firm sue the government for $10bn as compensation for an abandoned contract.

Claiming it lost money due to the actions of the federal government, P&ID initiated moves to recover a judgment debt of $6.6bn in damages plus $2.3bn in uncollected interest from the Nigerian government. This is calculated at $1.2m a day and according to a lead judgment by the London Arbitration Tribunal led by Lord Hoffmann, Nigeria has a case to answer.

On January 31, 2017, a tribunal had ruled that Nigeria should pay P&ID $6.6bn as damages, as well as pre- and post-judgment interest at 7% adding to a total of $10bn. However, Nigeria has since been fighting the judgement and in September 2020 secured a major victory when a London Commercial Court ordered the release of the $200m guarantee put in place as security for the stay of execution for the appeal filed against the judgment of Justice Butcher earlier on in the case.

P&ID had sought to increase the security to $400m but the court presided over by Sir Ross Cranston rejected the request and ordered costs of £70,000 against the company. Earlier that month, the court had granted another cost of £1.5m costs against P&ID as the case appeared to be gradually swinging in Nigeria's favour.

Today, Nigeria got a final ruling on the matter as the federal government was successful in getting the judgement overturned. P&ID had claimed it entered into an agreement with Nigeria to build a gas processing plant in Calabar, Cross River State but the deal collapsed because the Nigerian government did not fulfil its end of the bargain.