A former Minister of Petroleum Resources, Chief Don Obot Etiebet, has lauded the verdict of the Business and Property Court in London, the United Kingdom, which stopped the enforcement of the $11 billion arbitration award in favour of P&ID against Nigeria.
The court had, in a judgment delivered by Justice Robert Knowles on Monday, October 23, 2023, held that the process through which P&ID secured a 2010 contract to build a gas processing plant in Calabar, the Cross River State capital, was fraudulent.
Justice Knowles had said: “In the circumstances and for the reasons I have sought to describe and explain Nigeria succeeds in its challenge under section 68.
“I have not accepted all of Nigeria’s allegations. But the Awards were obtained by fraud and the Awards were and the way in which they were procured was contrary to public policy.
“What happened in this case is very serious indeed, and it is important that section 68 has been available to maintain the rule of law.”
In his reaction to the judgment, Etiebet told THE CONCLAVE that the P&ID/Nigeria London Court judgment should be a great eye-opener to Nigeria.
He said: “We should thank the London Commercial and Business Court judge for a very incisive judgment.”
Etiebet said a negative judgment would have further complicated Nigeria’s current economic predicament.
Read him: “Can you imagine what a negative judgment would have done to an already very bad economic situation in the country?
“The Naira would have crashed much more further. Our debt overhang would have deteriorated and our FX Reserves would have been depleted, and, our imports capabilty would have suffered, resulting in much higher prices in goods and services if we had to look for $11billion to pay the judgment debt.
“God bless that judge for seeing in between the lines in this contract and being a patriot to decide wisely.
“The whole case revolved around the endemic corruption in Nigeria, which con/419 foreign businessmen capitalise on, that you can buy Nigerian officials to sign papers for you because it takes two to tango in a country where ‘money talks and bullshit works.’
“The Nigerian officials who prepare/approve defective contracts for signing so that they could benefit from the contract while Nigeria suffers still abound.
“It is still happening today. There are so many contracts like that in the country, and this one might not be the first P&ID might have embarked upon.
“They couldn’t have just woken up from sleep to plan that fraud for the first time.
“When I was Minister of Petroleum, I adamantly refused to endorse such bogus PPP contracts that came to my table, and I have since remained an enemy to many till today.”
Etiebet continued: “I hope Nigeria through the “Renewed Hope” mantra of the present administration sees through what happened on this P&ID contract, learn from and prevent it by looking at the fine lines of the terms and conditions of the contracts.”
THE CONCLAVE repirts that Nigeria had over the years been involved in a fight with Process & Industrial since the company accused the Nigerian government of botching a deal by failing to provide gas to them.
The country had suffered a $6.6bn judgment debt in 2017 when the arbitration tribunal ordered the country to pay P&ID with interest to start counting from March 2013.
P&ID, in its claims, said Nigeria violated the terms of its agreement by failing to provide gas for the power plant it wants to build for the country.
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