A British judge on Friday gave the green light for a tiny private firm to seize more than $9 billion in assets from the Nigerian government over a failed natural gas deal. The amount represents one-fifth of the foreign reserves held by Africa's largest economy. The Process and Industrial Developments Limited (P&ID) company - widely reported to be registered in the British Virgin Islands - was founded by two Irish business partners for the purpose of executing the 2010 deal with the Lagos government.

The 20-year agreement would see P&ID "build a state-of-the-art gas processing plant to refine natural gas... (which) Nigeria would receive free of charge to power its national electric grid," according to the P&ID website.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2019