The Director of Legal Services at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Kofo Salam-Alada, has said that the federal government of Nigeria’s victorious case against the Process and Industrial Development (P&ID) $11bn award is one of the “greatest” litigation and landmark decisions for the apex bank, whose legal team participated in the proceedings.
Salam-Alada disclosed this in an interview with Nairametrics on Monday.
His analysis of the P&ID case comes years after a court in London quashed the $11 billion award against Nigeria in the much-talked-about P&ID case, which concerned a purported gas processing plant agreement with the Nigerian government in 2010.
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When asked by Nairametrics to comment on what he considers the landmark cases the CBN legal team participated in over the last 30 years, Salam-Alada mentioned the Federal Republic of Nigeria’s case against P&ID before the Commercial Court of the UK.
He highlighted that the federal government successfully challenged the arbitrary award, which, according to him, had “been the doldrums for over three years.”
- He stressed it was a landmark decision because the federal government, relying on relevant sections of the law, including Section 68 of the Arbitration Act of Nigeria, was able to convince the UK court about the fraud associated with the P&ID contract.
“Nigeria was able to prove fraud as the basis for the P&ID contract that was the subject matter of the arbitration.
“That, to the glory of God, is one of the greatest,” he said.
- In addition to the P&ID case, Salam-Alada stressed that other landmark cases in which the CBN featured include a number of regulatory matters wherein courts upheld the powers of the Central Bank of Nigeria to issue regulations.
He said that, by the court judgments, the regulations issued by the CBN remain “subsidiary legislation that has the force of law” across Nigeria.
Providing further insights on the apex bank’s legal team, he said that at the national level, the apex bank’s legal office is happy to have contributed its quota to the development of the law in the banking and financial sector.
“I started as an operations person in the CBN. The experience from there, we took it over to legal services and that enabled us to contribute to the development of the law for the economy, for the financial services, for the banking sectors,” he continued.
He said the apex bank has been involved in quite a number of legislation and regulations in Nigeria, working with other regulatory agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Nairametrics gathered that Salam-Alada will be retiring from the apex bank this month after joining the CBN in 1990.
Backstory
In 2010, Process & Industrial Developments (P&ID) secured a 20-year contract to build and operate a gas processing facility in the southern region of Nigeria.
- P&ID entered into an agreement with Nigeria to build a purported gas processing plant in Calabar, Cross River State, but the company said the deal collapsed because the Nigerian government allegedly did not fulfill its end of the bargain.
- On January 31, 2017, a tribunal ruled that Nigeria must compensate P&ID with $6.6 billion in damages, along with pre- and post-judgment interest at a rate of 7%.
- However, in court, federal government lawyers responded that P&ID executives had used bribery to secure the contract.
- In October 2023, the Business and Property Court in London, presided over by Justice Robin Knowles of the Commercial Courts of England and Wales, quashed the $11 billion award against Nigeria in the P&ID case.
Justice Knowles ruled that the award was obtained by fraud and was contrary to public policy.
A UK court also mandated Process & Industrial Developments (P&ID) Limited to pay Nigeria £20 million as damages and compensation following Nigeria’s victory in the $11 billion judgment debt previously heard.
