Stanley Uzoaru, Owerri
Elder statesman Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu has called for negotiations by parties in a dispute brought by Irish company Process and Industrial Developments Limited (P&ID) against Nigeria, from which a United Kingdom court handed down a $9 billion judgement against the Federal Government.
Iwuanyanwu, speaking to Daily Sun on phone from London, noted that the judgement had made a lot of Nigerians living abroad apprehensive and worried.
According to him, “the Federal Government should, most importantly, negotiate with the Irish company, and look at the contract again to see if it’s a good project for the country.”
He pointed out that carefully negotiating with the company would afford the country to pay at its own rate.
The elder statesman expressed fears that the country’s foreign reserves and the naira itself would collapse if the execution of the judgement was not handled properly.
Iwuanyanwu was of the opinion that such contracts, from which the international dispute arose, also abound across Nigeria’s 36 states. He urged the Federal Government to find out which states have signed onto such contracts, including at the federal level, in order to avert further calamity.
“State attorney-generals should call on the state government that have such contracts with foreign companies so that such experience would not occur again,” Iwuanyanwu advised.
A commercial court in the United Kingdom had on Friday, August 16, handed down a calamity judgment against the Federal Government for a failed contract, granting Irish company P&ID permission to seize up to $ 9 billion in assets belonging to the Nigerian government.
According to the judgment, Justice Christopher Butcher of the British court said that the firm (founded by two Irish businessmen Brendan Cahill and Michael Quinn) could seize up to 20 percent of Nigeria’s foreign reserves.
The Irish company was said to have struck a deal with Nigeria in 2010 for the country to supply gas to a processing plant in Calabar owned by P&ID.
According to Solicitor-General Dayo Apata, lawyers assigned to the case have been “instructed to pursue an appeal on the judgment and at the same time seek for a stay of execution of the said judgment.”