By Felix Onuah
ABUJA, Nov 20 (Reuters) - Nigeria has lodged an appeal
against an order to pay $200 million to a British court for a
stay on asset seizures while it challenges a ruling that would
have allowed a firm to try to seize more than $9 billion in
assets, its attorney general said.
Process & Industrial Developments, a private firm set up to
carry out a gas project with the West African country under a
2010 contract, won a $6.6 billion arbitration award after the
deal collapsed. The award has been accruing interest since 2013
and is now worth more than $9 billion.
In September, a British judge gave Nigeria permission to
seek to overturn the ruling that had been in favour of P&ID,
which was established by two Irish nationals with little
experience in oil and gas.
In exchange for granting Nigeria's request for a stay on any
asset seizures while its legal challenge was pending, the
country was ordered to pay $200 million to the court within 60
days. The deadline is due to be reached next week.
"We have appealed against the payment," Attorney General
Abubakar Malami said in the capital, Abuja, on Wednesday.
He did not say when the appeal had been lodged or what the
response, if any, had been from the court.
Nigeria's appeal of the ruling that allowed the British
Virgin Islands-based firm to seek assets, called a "set-aside",
would need to prove there was an error in that ruling.
Malami also denied reports that Nigeria had sacked its team
of lawyers.
"The lawyers are not sacked," he said. The attorney general
said new lawyers may be used since the focus of the case had
shifted from appealing the ruling to proving that there had been
an error.
But he said this did not mean the previous legal team would
be replaced. "We may decide to bring on board new sets of
lawyers to handle the new brief, but then we may decide that the
old and new lawyers should work together," he said.