The British court had asked Nigeria to pay $200m security payment in the court’s account while granting request to stay execution in the award of $9.6bn award in favour of Process and Industry Development Limited.
The Nigerian Government has finally agreed to pay the $200m security deposit ordered by Justice Christopher Butcher of the Commercial Court in London in September in the ongoing gas dispute case between Nigeria and Process and Industry Development Limited, it has been learnt.
The British court had asked Nigeria to pay $200m security payment in the court’s account while granting request to stay execution in the award of $9.6bn award in favour of Process and Industry Development Limited, according to Sunday PUNCH.
In a statement by P&ID on Saturday, the Nigerian Government’s legal team said during a hearing at the London court on Friday that the country would pay the $200m security deposit.
The statement read in part, “Before Justice Butcher today (Friday) in London, the Nigerian legal team acknowledged that President Buhari has authorised the steps to provide a bank guarantee for the $200m in security that was ordered by the English court in September.
“Moreover, the following steps have already been taken by the Nigerian Government: Ministry of Finance has received approval to proceed with obtaining the bank guarantee; Minister of Finance has submitted a request to the Central Bank of Nigeria to proceed with procuring the bank guarantee; the Central Bank of Nigeria has submitted a request to an unnamed foreign correspondent bank to issue the bank guarantee from London and provide the relevant information to the court.”
The Nigerian Government through the Office of the Attorney-General of the Federation had filed an appeal before the London court to stop the order of September 2019 to pay the $200m security deposit and the $9.6bn Tribunal Award in favour of P&ID.
The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, who was part of the government’s delegation to London late September, disclosed to reporters in Abuja on October 2 that the government had begun the process of filing an appeal against the $200m security deposit.
In August, a court in London gave P&ID the permission to seize Nigerian assets worth $9bn.
The ruling is the culmination of a case, which started in 2010 when an agreement to build a gas processing plant in Calabar, Cross River State, collapsed between Nigeria and the Irish firm after the former failed to live up to its side of the deal.
P&ID had in 2013 won a $6.6bn arbitration case 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.
The Nigerian Government had tried to nullify the award, insisting that it was not a case to be heard outside its shores but the British judiciary rejected the argument.
On November 20, the Nigerian Government appealed the $200m security deposit ordered by the court.
The court ordered that the payment must be made before it can give a stay of execution on the ruling by Justice Butcher that P&ID could seize over $9bn worth of Nigeria’s assets pending its appeal in a higher court.
But with the latest development, the dynamics appeared to have changed in the entire case.