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Court Grants Chinese Investor Right to Confiscate Two Nigerian Govt Property in UK
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Two Nigerian properties located in the United Kingdom are on the verge of being taken over by a Chinese investor following an order granting the investor the right to enforce a $70 million investment treaty award against Nigeria.
The investor – Zhongshan Fucheng Industrial Investment – was granted final charging orders over two UK residential properties owned by the Nigerian government after the company also attached a £20 million debt relating to the high-profile P&ID case.
Reports said the Chinese firm secured the order on June 14 when Master Sullivan in the Commercial Court in London granted the orders in respect of two Liverpool properties estimated to be worth a combined £1.7 million.
According to the judge, the order was premised on the fact that the properties have been converted to commercial use outside Nigeria’s diplomatic or consular activities in the UK, stressing that enforcement of the order should prevail.
The case was a gritty legal battle between Zhongshan, represented before the court by Withers and barristers at 3VB, while Nigeria was represented by Squire Patton Boggs and a barrister at Atkin Chambers.
Reports said the underlying arbitration was in relation to a joint venture with Nigeria’s Ogun State to establish a free trade zone near Lagos in 2013. A Zhongshan subsidiary held a 60% stake in the project but Ogun terminated its participation three years later.
In 2021, a London-seated UNCITRAL tribunal chaired by Lord Neuberger including Matthew Gearing KC and Rotimi Oguneso (SAN) said Nigeria was guilty of expropriation and other breaches of the China-Nigeria bilateral investment treaty and ordered the country to to pay US$55.6 million plus interest and costs.
Nigeria in the same year put a challenge against the award in the Commercial Court on jurisdictional grounds. Nigeria’s position was that the arbitration clause in the BIT was invalid. But in later development, Nigeria withdrew the challenge before a hearing on Zhongshan’s application for security and security for costs was about to take place.
Mrs. Justice Cockerill in the same court granted Zhongshan an ex parte enforcement order in December 2021, but Nigeria did not file against this order within the 74-day deadline allowed by the law.
In July 2023, the Court of Appeal in London stopped Nigeria from bringing a late challenge to the enforcement order, stressing Cockerill’s provisional determination that state immunity did not apply had become final.
The investor reportedly got interim charging orders in June and August last year over the two properties in Liverpool, which are owned by the Nigerian government.
Nigeria’s efforts to dismiss these charging orders failed as Master Sullivan in her judgment, held that the properties are leased to residential tenants and that no “consular activities are actually taking place on the premises”.
She also dismissed Nigeria’s arguments that it had not been properly served with the interim charging order applications under the State Immunity Act and that Zhongshan had failed to give full and frank disclosure when seeking them.
Master Sullivan also dismissed Nigeria’s objection about parties bringing multiple enforcement action, saying that parties are “entitled to bring as many types of enforcement action as they see fit to recover their debt.” She noted that Nigeria had yet to pay any of the award and that the value of the properties represented a “small proportion of it”.
Timi Balogun of Squire Patton Boggs, counsel to Nigeria, said: “We respectfully disagree with the Master’s decision, which we believe somewhat brushes over complex public international law issues, including with respect to state immunity and the right of a foreign state’s High Commission to own and manage portfolios of fixed assets in England and Wales. We believe that such issues need to be weighed very carefully, and we intend to appeal this decision so that these complex and important issues can be considered by the higher courts.”
Zhongshan applied to enforce the award in Washington, DC in 2022. Last year, the DC district court rejected Nigeria’s motion to dismiss the action on sovereign immunity grounds. The state argued the China-Nigeria BIT was “quintessentially sovereign” and therefore the award did not arise from a commercial relationship between the parties. The DC district proceeding is stayed pending Nigeria’s appeal of the sovereign immunity decision.
Zhongshan has also taken enforcement measures in various other jurisdictions, including in Quebec, where it seeks conservatory seizure of a private jet; and in Belgium, where Nigeria is challenging attachments of properties.
In the British Virgin Islands, Zhongshan has obtained an interim attachment over a £20 million liability owed Nigeria by BVI-registered company Process & Industrial Development (P&ID) under an English Commercial Court ruling. The Chinese company withdrew an earlier application to attach the same liability in England.
The Commercial Court ordered P&ID to pay Nigeria £20 million in costs in December last year after upholding the state’s challenge to an US$11 billion award in favour of the company. Mr Justice Robin Knowles found the award was procured through false evidence, corrupt payments and improper retention of leaked documents.
Four Nigerian-Americans have won elective positions in the November 3 midterm elections in the United States, while the outcome of another candidate, Segun Adeyina, remained pending in Georgia as votes were being counted.
The winners are Will Jawando, Junior Ezeonu, Oye Owolewa and Carol Kazeem, who secured positions in local government and State legislatures across Maryland, Texas, Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania.
In Maryland, Jawando, the Democratic candidate, won the race for Montgomery County executive, defeating Republican candidate Esther Wells.
Results published by NBC Washington on Wednesday showed Jawando polling 237,383 votes, representing 78.15 per cent, against Wells’s 66,383 votes, or 21.85 per cent, with 72 per cent of the expected votes counted.
Jawando, who previously served on the Montgomery County Council, is the son of a Nigerian father and an American mother. His Nigerian heritage and political career have featured in reports by The Baltimore Banner and The Washington Post.
In Texas, 27-year-old Ezeonu secured a seat in the state House of Representatives for District 101. He had defeated incumbent Chris Turner in the Democratic primary and was the only candidate on the ballot for the November general election after no Republican entered the race.
According to his campaign biography, Ezeonu was born in Onitsha, Anambra State, and moved to Texas at the age of two.
He was elected to the Grand Prairie City Council in 2021 and later became the city’s youngest mayor pro tempore.
In Washington DC, Owolewa, the Democratic candidate, won an at-large seat on the District of Columbia Council.
Local publication – The 51st – reported that Owolewa secured 69 per cent of the vote, against 21 per cent recorded by independent candidate Elissa Silverman.
Owolewa, a pharmacist and son of Nigerian immigrants from Kwara and Osun states, previously served as the District’s elected shadow representative.
The position allows its holder to advocate for Washington, DC, statehood but does not confer voting rights in the US Congress.
Meanwhile, Kazeem, also a Democrat, retained her seat in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, representing District 159.
The result of Adeyina’s contest in Georgia had yet to be called as of Wednesday, with votes still being counted.
Democrats, on Tuesday, won full control of the US Congress in a sweeping midterm rout with a landslide of upsets that delivered a crushing rebuke of President Donald Trump and his Republican Party.
The victory handed Democrats both the House of Representatives and Senate, giving them power to block Trump’s agenda and investigate alleged corruption for the last two years of his presidency.
The vote reflected deep anger over living costs, tariffs and Trump’s war against Iran, which has sent fuel prices soaring and compounded dissatisfaction with an already deeply unpopular president.
Trump struck a conciliatory note despite his history of questioning election results, telling The New York Times: “I am absolutely willing to accept those results” and promising to “work with the Democrats.”
But minutes later on social media, the 80-year-old signaled how he intends to deal with Democratic attempts to pass laws, posting a picture of a red baseball cap emblazoned: “VETO.”
The Democrats’ decisive Senate breakthroughs came in Kansas and Iowa, the fifth and sixth Republican-held seats to fall in the extraordinary “blue wave” election night.
In Kansas, Methodist minister Adam Hamilton defeated Republican incumbent Roger Marshall, becoming the first Democrat elected to the Senate from the reliably conservative state since 1932.
Iowa had not elected a Democratic senator since 2008, again illustrating the scale of the party’s inroads into Republican strongholds.
The upsets followed victories in Texas, South Carolina, North Carolina and Ohio, where voters rejected Republican candidates despite Trump’s intensive efforts to rally his supporters.
Texas was a political bombshell.
Democrat James Talarico ousted a Trump-backed Senate candidate, while Gina Hinojosa unseated Republican governor Greg Abbott, ending decades of Republican control of the state’s top office.
Democrats also protected key Senate seats of their own, including Jon Ossoff’s in Georgia and an open seat in New Hampshire.
Republicans had held a 53-47 Senate majority.
The six-seat Democratic gain proved sufficient for networks to project a takeover despite some races remaining unresolved.
Democrats also captured the House after flipping Republican-held districts in states stretching from Pennsylvania and New Jersey to Kentucky, Arizona and North Carolina.
Some victories came in territory Trump had carried comfortably in 2024, despite Republican attempts to shore up House seats by redrawing electoral boundaries.
One bellwether was Indiana, where Democrat J.D. Ford defeated Republican congresswoman Victoria Spartz in a district Trump won by 17 points. Analysts had identified an upset there as a warning of a much wider Democratic advance.
In Georgia, former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms became the first Black woman elected governor in US history, while other Democratic gains extended to statehouses across the country.
Republicans had some bright spots in Florida, where Trump-backed Byron Donalds won the governorship, becoming the state’s first Black governor, and Ashley Moody kept a Senate seat.
George Washington University professor Todd Belt called the Democratic advance “a big wipeout and a strong repudiation of Donald Trump and his policies,” citing voters’ concerns about the economy, corruption and the Iran conflict.
Democrats will now be able to block Trump’s legislation, investigate his administration over corruption allegations, the Iran war and immigration enforcement, and use Senate control to thwart judicial appointments and senior nominations.
Robert Garcia, a Democrat expected to lead the powerful House Oversight Committee, warned Republicans on social media: “LAWYER UP.”
House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries declared Trump’s MAGA movement “on the run from sea to shining sea.”
Jeffries is also positioned to become the first Black speaker of the House when the new Congress convenes in January, if elected by his colleagues.
For many voters, the central concern was Trump’s stewardship of the economy.
“Rent, groceries, utility bills, and property taxes keep climbing,” 24-year-old Los Angeles voter Taylor Cook told AFP.
AFP
The former Vice President and African Democratic Congress (ADC) presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, has vowed that his campaign in Sokoto will proceed despite alleged intimidation, declaring that the party will resist any attempt to turn Nigeria into a one-party State.
Atiku stated this on Tuesday in Abuja while addressing the press on developments ahead of the party’s campaign in Sokoto.
He said what is unfolding in Sokoto is not ordinary political competition but a calculated campaign to frustrate the ADC, obstruct its campaign and deny Nigerians the freedom to choose.
“Public facilities that should be available to every political party for legitimate campaign activities have been blocked. Logistical support has been withheld. These are not harmless administrative delays. They are deliberate attempts to deny ADC a level playing field,” he said.
Atiku alleged that the leadership of the Department of State Services was recruiting people to stage protests in Sokoto to create disorder and give the APC-controlled state government a pretext to impose a curfew and prevent the campaign from taking off.
“We know where some of these protesters are assembled: an office behind Zenith Bank on Koko Road. Trucks are stationed there and dispatched to key points, including roundabout. These mobilised protesters are causing gridlock. Commuters are being threatened and, in some cases, beaten,” he said.
He said security agencies existed to protect Nigerians and uphold the law, not to recruit protesters or help a political party manufacture a crisis.
“This is not intelligence work. It is political interference dressed in official uniform. I call on every officer involved to stop immediately and return to constitutional duty of impartial service,” he said.
Atiku accused the Tinubu administration of devoting too much energy to weakening credible opposition and too little to solving the problems facing Nigerians in the last three- and-a-half years.
