Court documents:
- The Federal Republic of Nigeria v Process &Industrial Developments Limited [2020] EWHC 2379 (Comm) (High Court decision to allow arbitration challenge)
- The Federal Republic of Nigeria v Process &Industrial Developments Limited [2023] EWHC 2638 (Comm) (High Court judgment overturning the arbitral award)
- Process & Industrial Developments Limited v The Federal Republic of Nigeria [2024] EWCA Civ 790 (Court of Appeal judgment in favour of Nigeria on costs)
- Process & Industrial Developments Limited v The Federal Republic of Nigeria [2025] UKSC 36 (Supreme Court judgment in favour of Nigeria on costs)
In October 2023, the Federal Republic of Nigeria succeeded in setting aside a $11 billion arbitration award against them brought by a small offshore company called Process and Industrial Development (P&ID). This concluded a long running dispute involving arbitration proceedings mired by the “most severe abuses of the arbitral process”; commercial court proceedings branded ‘sham litigation’ by Nigeria; and a hotly contested costs dispute.
P&ID is a small BVI-registered company with a history of contracting with the Nigerian state, originally established by two Irish businessmen. In 2010 they won a 20-year contract to build and operate a gas processing facility for the Nigerian government without competitive tender and with several existing contractual disputes between other companies belonging to the same directors and Nigerian government departments. The contract was never performed by either side.
Two years later, P&ID began arbitration proceedings against the Nigerian government for breach of this contract. Despite the company failing to begin construction work themselves, they claimed that the government had repudiated the contract by failing to provide “wet” gas for it to process. Following five years of arbitration proceedings P&ID were awarded compensation of $6.6 billion with $1.3m interest per day – a crippling sum for Nigeria to pay.
The West African nation launched a challenge to set aside the award in London’s commercial court, arguing that P&ID had obtained the original contract through bribery of public officials and that the arbitration proceedings had been tainted with P&ID’s perjured evidence and further bribes.
In January 2023, Nigeria’s court challenge kicked off. It was a blockbuster commercial trial which ended with a judgment in September 2023 finding in Nigeria’s favour that there had been corruption which tainted the procurement and arbitral process. P&ID’s awards – which by this point had grown to $11 billion – were overturned. The Court also referred two London-based lawyers who acted for P&ID to the legal regulators over their conduct during the arbitration.
P&ID challenged the decision of the High Court to award Nigeria’s costs in sterling – which totalled at least £44.2 million in unassessed costs – as opposed to Naira. This dispute went all the way to the UK Supreme Court who ruled that ‘there is no reason to award costs in this case other than in sterling’.
Although the litigation finally came to a close in 2025, the P&ID saga has not ended as the enforcement of the costs order and outcome of the High Court’s regulatory referral is yet to be seen. Over three years since the High Court decision, the legal regulators have yet to announce the outcome of their investigation into the conduct of the London-based solicitor and barrister who acted for P&ID.
