Court stops execution of FSPO/Egina oil field contract

A Federal High Court in Lagos has ordered the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) and four others to maintain status quo in the award of the multi-million dollar contract for the controversial storage and offloading unit knowns as FPSO in Egina Field within Oil Mining Lease (OML) 130.
The preservative order, according to the court, is to be in force pending the determination of a suit filed by a lawyer, John Owubokiri.
Other defendants in the suit are; the National Petroleum Investment Management Services (NPIMS), Nigerian Content Development Monitoring Board (NCDMB), Samsung Heavy Industry Nigeria Limited and Total Upstream Nigeria Ltd.
Trial judge, Justice Okon Abang ordered the defendants to “maintain status quo ante bellum as per the plaintiff’s claims before the court pending the hearing and determination of the motion on notice dated 19/11/2014.”
Justice Abang also ordered the plaintiff to serve on the AGF and NCDMB  the writ of summons, statement of claim, list of witnesses, list of exhibits, witness statement on oath, motion on notice and all other processes in the suit out of jurisdiction of the court.
The court noted that it was better to hear the defendants before taking any decision on the issues raised by the plaintiff in the ex-parte application.
Besides, the court took cognizance of the fact that since the matter was before it, hence parties should not do anything “that may frustrate the hearing and final determination of the suit.”
The plaintiff, Owubokiri in the substantive suit, is asking the court to declare  that the award of the contract to Samsung Heavy Industry Nigeria Limited for the engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning of the Egina FPSO was unlawful and tainted by irregularities in that the  NPIMS,  NCDMB  and Total Upstream Nigeria ignored  all extant laws, regulations, directives and guidelines guiding such awards.