The Nigeria/P&ID Arbitration : The Limits of Sovereign Immunity and Nigeria’s Sovereign Prerogative to Resist Enforcement of the Award

The award of almost ten billion dollars in damages against Nigeria for breach of its contract with P&ID and the leave granted by an English Court to enforce the judgment against Nigeria raises current issues of the practicality of enforcement of a judgment. In answering the question, we, having set out the factual background, examined the general principles of sovereign immunity. We elucidated that though international law tends towards a cesser of immunity when a sovereign is acting strictly as a trader in the market place, however, when a sovereign has the option of either claiming or waiving immunity, unless and until it waives immunity, the courts of another territorial entity are unable to proceed against it. We also established that notwithstanding a valid waiver of immunity, the waiver lasts only for the duration of the proceeding. Thus, waiver of immunity to a proceeding does not carry over to enforcement of the decision in the proceeding. From this perspective, we conclude that though Nigeria validly waived its sovereign immunity for the purposes of the arbitral proceedings with P&ID, unless and until Nigeria consents to the enforcement of the arbitral award against her, it cannot be enforced against Nigeria