South Atlantic Petroleum boss, General Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma (Rtd) has been mentioned in the Process and Industrial Development (P&ID) contract controversy.
This was disclosed by the billionaire while speaking to journalists about the ongoing drama surrounding the $9.6 billion judgement against Nigeria in a lawsuit filed by P&ID.
Danjuma stated that the project was originally his idea and that one of his companies, Tita-Kuru Petrochemicals Ltd spent $40 million preparing it.
How it happened: Danjuma, who is a retired army general said that the founder of the company, Michael Quinn, was his consultant and that he allowed Quinn to use his funds and office space until he found out that Quinn also applied for the contract.
[READ ALSO: $9bn fine: P&ID open to settlement as court order to seize Nigeria’s assets is awaited]
The former Minister of Defence went on to say that he was supposed to get a share of P&ID contract in return for his initial investment but all that went down the drain when he found out about Quinn’s plan to betray him.
He added that prior to the ongoing lawsuit, he did not hear from the company because they refused to reply to the letters he sent.
The Backstory: As earlier reported by Nairametrics in recent articles, P&ID, an Irish Firm, was awarded $6.6 billion in an arbitration decision over a failed project to build a gas processing plant in the Southern Nigerian city of Calabar. With the accumulated interest payments, the sum now tops $9 billion, which amounts to 20% of Nigeria’s foreign reserves.
The firm had initiated moves to identify the Nigerian assets that could be seized and it might include the country’s oil cargoes.
Meanwhile, the Federal Government has moved to negotiate with the firm and find a way out as the government knows the consequences of such payment on the economy.
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