The Federal Government has urged Nigerians to ignore the ostentatious claims by Process and Industrial Developments Ltd. (P&ID) on the compilation of Nigeria’s assets for attachment over the 9.6 billion dollar judgment debt.
Nigeria’s Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, made the call in Abuja when he paid a working visit to the headquarters of the “Leadership’’ Newspaper in Abuja on Tuesday.
Briefing the management and editorial board of the newspaper on the purported gas contract that led to the debt, the minister reassured that the government would take legal and diplomatic actions to ensure no asset of the country was annexed over the case.
“You will see that there is a lot of grandstanding on the part of the P&ID, especially by the Public Relations consultant it hired. As a matter of fact, they are already threatening that they are already compiling the list of assets of Nigeria to attach.
“The truth of the matter is that, even in the judgment, the court said that it cannot start any attachment until the court resumes from vacation.
“We are doing everything possible and we are very optimistic that we will escape any embarrassment of attachment of the country’s asset as a result of this dubious award.’’
He said that the federal government had taken all necessary steps to ensure that no property of the country was attached by any court.
“Government will leave no stone unturned, legally and diplomatically to ensure that our asset will not be affected as a result of the judgment,’’ he said.
The minister reiterated that the contract was a scam from inception with both local and international collaborators, who were bent on depleting the nation’s foreign reserves.
‘`How can people come in to Nigeria with portfolio, and walk away with about 20 percent of our entire foreign reserves,” he said.
A UK court had in a ruling authorized, P&ID, an Irish engineering and project management company, to seize 9.6 billion dollars in Nigerian assets over the failed gas contract.
The judgment was a fallout of the contract purportedly entered into in 2010 between the Federal Ministry of Petroleum Resources and P&ID, and subsequently awarded in July 2015 by an arbitration panel sitting in London in favour of the company.
MM/GIK/APA