Nigeria escapes $11 billion bill after landmark UK court ruling over failed gas project
Nigeria already owes billions of dollars in debt and grapples with high inflation a cost-of-living crisis. Nigeria’s government is celebrating a “landmark victory” after a UK court ruled it was not liable for a multibillion-dollar payout earlier awarded to a private firm over a failed gas project. The West African nation was previously ordered by an arbitration tribunal in 2017 to pay $6.6 billion, plus interest in damages to a British Virgin Islands-based engineering firm, Process and Industrial Developments Limited (P&ID). The company had sued for compensation over lost profits following the collapse of a 20-year deal with Nigerian authorities in 2010 to build a gas processing facility. The awarded sum and accumulated interest had now exceeded $11 billion, nearly half of Nigeria’s federal budget for this year. If upheld by the London court, the tribunal’s $11 billion payout to P&ID would have taken a devastating toll ...