Nigeria’s dispute with a British Virgin Islands-based firm over an arbitration award worth $10 billion will go to trial at the High Court in London in January 2023, a spokesperson for the Nigerian government said on Thursday.
The firm, Process & Industrial Developments (P&ID), won a $6.6 billion award from a London court after a 2010 deal for it to carry out a gas project in Nigeria collapsed. The Nigerian government wants to have the award overturned.
The award has been accruing interest since 2013 and is now worth $10 billion, which Nigeria says could cover its health budget 10 times over. It has alleged that the gas deal was an elaborate scam designed to defraud the Nigerian state.
P&ID, a vehicle created for the defunct gas deal, has denied the allegation and accused the Nigerian government in the past of “false allegations and wild conspiracy theories”.
Representatives for the firm did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
The British courts are facing an enormous backlog of work after more than a year of on-off COVID-19 restrictions that have delayed many cases, leading to trial dates being set far into the future.
Earlier, lawyers for the Nigerian government filed “new and substantive” allegations of fraud with a British court on Friday, carrying on a fight against an arbitration award now worth close to $10 billion, a spokesman for the attorney general said.
The government has been contesting efforts by British Virgin Islands-based Process & Industrial Developments (P&ID) to enforce the award for a failed gas project and is also seeking to overturn the underlying award, the spokesman said.
Attorney General Abubakar Malami and other government officials have repeatedly said that an investigation this year by the country’s anti-graft unit had uncovered proof of fraud.
