P&ID: Importance of following legal process in dispute resolution, by Buhari

Former President Muhammadu Buhari has stressed the importance of following legal process in dispute resolution.

He made this known in an article in which he reacted to the country’s dispute with Process & Industrial Development (P&ID), which was resolved in favour of Nigeria on October 23.

“Had Nigeria lost, it would have required schools not to be built, nurses not to be trained and roads not to be repaired, on an epic scale, to pay a handful of contractors, lawyers and their allies – for a project that never broke ground,” he said.

The article reads in part: “How did it get to this point? How did Nigeria prevail? Was this a one-off, or par for a shabby and distasteful course? What are the lessons for the future?

“The ‘P&ID Affair’ was already firmly set by the time I came into office in 2015. A company registered in the British Virgin Islands that no one had heard of, with hardly any staff or assets, had won a contract to build a gas processing plant in Cross River. The company was owned by Irish intermediaries who knew Nigeria well and had done business in everything from healthcare to fixing tanks.

“The previous government could not supply the gas. The plant was never built. Construction was not started. P&ID did not even buy the land for the facility. But the contract, incredibly, was clear: P&ID could sue Nigeria, and claim all the profits it might have made over 20 years as if everything had been completed.

“Nigeria was in court in London, trying to talk down liability and costs. Back at home, fixers were looking to work out a quiet settlement. This is often the way. A lot of contracts end up in dispute. P&ID won a settlement in 2017 of $6 billion, with compound interest. People, including ex-British Cabinet Minister Priti Patel, were queuing up to insist we pay, or risk Nigeria becoming an untrustworthy trade pariah.

“It was clear that far from the whole story had been told. I tasked Abba Kyari, my Chief-of-staff and Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, with finding a way, even at that late stage and despite so much conflicting advice, to get us a fair hearing. Working with a number of different agencies and senior officials of government, we began to find a huge amount of evidence, not all of which Justice Knowles was to accept. But he agreed that P&ID had paid bribes. He agreed that one of P&ID’s founders had committed perjury. And he agreed that P&ID had somehow found in its possession a steady supply of Nigeria’s privileged internal legal documents, outlining our plans, strategies and problems.

“My own view is that this whole sorry affair shows how important it is to follow the legal process in resolving a dispute. It shows that given time and opportunity for each side to present their case, the temple of justice can satisfactorily resolve all disputes without resorting to extra-judicial measures. It was definitely worth the struggle: this was an attempted heist of historic proportions, an attempt to steal from the treasury a third of Nigeria’s foreign reserves.”