Former President Muhammadu Buhari, on Sunday, said the country would have paid $15 bn if it had lost the case against the international firm, Process & Industrial Development Limited.
He lamented that such monetary loss could be substituted to finance key infrastructural projects, among others.
In a series of tweets shared via his profile on X (formerly Twitter), Buhari wrote, “Rarely in modern times can so few have tried to take so much from so many. If Nigeria had lost its arbitration dispute with Process & Industrial Development in a London court on 23 October, it would have cost our people close to $15 bn.
“But ordinary Nigerians never took the decisions that ended up before Justice Knowles. Had Nigeria lost, it would have required schools not to be built, nurses not to be trained and roads not to be repaired, on an epic scale, to pay a handful of contractors, lawyers and their allies – for a project that never broke ground.”
The PUNCH reported that, following a 2010 agreement between P$ID and the Federal Government, the firm pledged to build a gas processing plant in Nigeria.
Reacting to the matter, Buhari recalled that during his administration in 2015, he asked his former Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, and erstwhile Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, to “get Nigeria a fair hearing.”
He noted that the firm, owned by Irish intermediaries who understood the systematics of the Nigerian market, won the contract to build a gas processing plant in Cross Rivers State.
“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.”
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