Attorney general opens new investigation to avoid paying P&ID's $9bn Calabar gas bill

摘要

Nigerian attorney general Abubakar Malami is making great efforts to avoid having to find the $9bn that Nigeria was ordered to pay by a London arbitration panel in 2017 to the company Process & Industrial Development (P&ID) following the failure of a gas project in the city of Calabar (Africa Energy Intelligence, 30/20/2018). Malami, who is close to and was the personal lawyer of President Muhammadu Buhari, is trying to prove that the affair is a scam organised by former Nigerian leaders, including former president Goodluck Jonathan and his oil minister Diezani Alison-Madueke. A cluster of companies which had formed around P&ID and the Jonathan administration at the time - around 60 in total - are also suspected by Malami of having enriched themselves at the expense of the Nigerian state in the wake of the affair. In the list of companies published by Nigerian online newspaper Premium Times are several involved in defence and security.