Robin Knowles, the UK judge who overturned the controversial $11 billion arbitral award against Nigeria in the P&ID case, has strongly criticised both the arbitration tribunal and Nigeria’s legal team, saying their failures enabled “unrealistic” damage claims to go unchallenged.
Speaking at the Roebuck Lecture hosted by the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators in London on June 18, Knowles said he “struggled to accept what happened” before finally setting aside the award in 2023. He described the case as one of the most troubling he had encountered in international arbitration.
The dispute originated from a 2010 gas supply agreement between the Nigerian government and Process & Industrial Developments (P&ID), which was never implemented. In 2017, a tribunal awarded P&ID $6.6 billion, with interest pushing the figure to over $11 billion by 2023. But Justice Knowles ruled in October 2023 that the award had been secured through fraud, citing bribery of Nigerian officials and P&ID’s possession of privileged documents.
Reflecting on the arbitration, Knowles faulted Nigeria’s legal representatives for failing to challenge the inflated claims presented by P&ID’s experts properly. “The conduct and effort of Nigeria’s lawyers at the quantum stage deserved severe criticism,” he said.
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He also said the tribunal, particularly Lord Hoffmann and Anthony Evans, accepted P&ID’s projections of 20 years of uninterrupted profit without considering potential market risks. “Respectfully, I did not consider the tribunal did all that it could to find out more, here and elsewhere,” Knowles said.
The judge warned that oversized awards like P&ID’s threaten the credibility of international arbitration. “Vast awards lead to major enforcement disputes, encourage more parties to pursue vast claims and prevent access to justice,” he said, adding that the P&ID damages were equivalent to a quarter of Nigeria’s national budget and larger than its combined health and education allocations.
He called for reforms that would limit excessive reparations that could cripple entire nations, suggesting tribunals take a more active role in assessing evidence and financial projections.
Meanwhile, the UK Supreme Court has dismissed P&ID’s appeal on currency of payment, upholding that the £43 million in costs awarded to Nigeria must be paid in pounds sterling, not naira.
