The several months late President Umaru Yar’Adua spent on the sick bed prior to his demise on May 5, 2010, paved the way for Process & Industrial Developments Limited (P&ID), a tiny natural gas company to hoodwink the federal government into allegedly signing a gas supply and processing agreement (GSPA) which may cost the country a whopping $9 billion following last week’s British Commercial Court ruling, THISDAY findings have shown.
If the judgment is executed and the aforementioned amount is to be paid, the UK firm might walk away with 20 per cent of Nigeria’s external reserves, which stood at $44.425 billion as of last Thursday, and 2.5 per cent of Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
This is just as former President Goodluck Jonathan has washed his hands of the matter, saying that the controversial contract was signed in January of 2010, while he became acting President on February 9, 2010. Jonathan, who said this through his former aide, Reno Omokri, insisted that the cabal held sway during that period Yar’Adua was ill.
Meanwhile, a hedge fund managed company, VR Capital Group, which had knowledge of the matter, had in March this year, taken as much as 25 per cent stake in P&ID. Since then, the company has been trying to pull levers of power in the U.S. and the U.K. to make Nigeria settle or, failing that, enable the company to start seizing assets, Bloomberg reported.
Read Also: Nigeria loses ₦1,085 trillion daily to fuel smuggling
The Ministry of Petroleum Resources then, headed by late Rilwanu Lukman, had struck the agreement in January 2010 with P&ID, which was founded in 2006 by two Irishmen, Michael Quinn and Cahill.
However, a source at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) yesterday told THISDAY that, “the firm awarded $9 billion judgment debt against Nigeria never scratched the ground to commence the project.