The major lawsuits against Nigeria right now span cryptocurrency regulation, arbitration fraud, environmental damage, and public-finance accountability. The largest is a $79.5 billion claim the Nigerian government has brought against Binance; the most consequential recently resolved is the Process and Industrial Developments case, in which Nigeria defeated an $11 billion arbitration award by proving it had been obtained through bribery. Shell faces claims from roughly 14,000 Niger Delta residents in English courts, a settled $496 million dispute over the Ajaokuta steel complex is under parliamentary scrutiny, and a Nigerian civil society group has filed a string of suits over missing public funds.
The $79.5 Billion Case Against Binance
Nigeria’s Federal Inland Revenue Service is pursuing Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, for $79.5 billion in alleged economic losses and a further $2 billion in back taxes. It is one of the largest financial claims ever filed against a technology company by a sovereign state.
The government alleges Binance let users trade naira for stablecoins and other assets convertible to foreign currency, driving dollar demand and pushing the naira down. Officials have called the activity “currency speculation and rate-fixing” and say the platform operated for six years in Nigeria without proper licensing or tax registration. The Central Bank of Nigeria initially put the figure for capital flight through Binance at $26 billion, a number the company disputes, saying it reflects cumulative trade volume rather than money leaving Nigeria.
A parallel criminal case accuses Binance of non-payment of value-added tax and company income tax, failure to file returns, and helping customers evade tax. By March 2026, the two sides had opened talks on an out-of-court settlement, and a Federal High Court in Abuja adjourned the criminal matter to May 2026 for a status report. Separately, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission brought money laundering charges involving an alleged $35.4 million; those charges remain against Binance as a corporate entity.
The Detention of Binance Executives
The dispute turned into a diplomatic incident in February 2024, when Nigerian authorities detained two Binance executives. Nadeem Anjarwalla, the company’s Africa regional manager, escaped custody on March 22, 2024, reportedly using a smuggled passport after asking guards for permission to visit a mosque, and fled to Kenya. The guards responsible were arrested; Anjarwalla had not been recaptured as of the most recent reporting.
Tigran Gambaryan, Binance’s head of financial crime compliance, was denied bail twice and held at Kuje Correctional Centre in Abuja, where he contracted malaria and double pneumonia and suffered a herniated disk. After eight months and sustained pressure from the United States, the EFCC withdrew its charges against him personally in October 2024, and he was flown to the US for medical treatment. His release was reportedly tied to American commitments to deeper cooperation with Nigeria on cybercrime.
Binance exited the Nigerian market in March 2024 and has said it is “cooperating with the FIRS to address potential historic tax liabilities.” The civil claim is still live, with procedural fights continuing over how to serve legal documents on a company that no longer has a physical office in the country.
The P&ID $11 Billion Arbitration
Process and Industrial Developments, a small company registered in the British Virgin Islands, came close to collecting more than $11 billion from Nigeria before a London court found the entire claim rested on bribery.
The dispute arose from a 2010 Gas Supply and Processing Agreement under which Nigeria was to supply wet gas to facilities P&ID would build. Neither side ever performed. P&ID went to arbitration, and a 2017 final award ordered Nigeria to pay $6.6 billion plus 7% interest. By 2023 the sum had reached more than $11 billion, roughly a third of Nigeria’s foreign exchange reserves at the time.
After an eight-week trial in early 2023, Justice Robin Knowles of the Commercial Court of England and Wales ruled in Nigeria’s favor, finding P&ID had secured the contract by bribing a Nigerian oil ministry official and had concealed this during arbitration. The court also found P&ID had obtained confidential Nigerian legal documents during the proceedings and failed to return them. Knowles singled out two British lawyers, Trevor Burke and Seamus Andrew, who stood to receive $850 million and up to $3 billion respectively, calling their conduct “indefensible” and referring the matter to legal standards regulators.
P&ID was ordered to pay Nigeria’s legal costs of more than £44 million. It appealed over the currency of payment, arguing naira was appropriate given exchange rate fluctuations. The High Court ordered payment in sterling, the Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal in July 2024, and on October 22, 2025, the UK Supreme Court unanimously dismissed P&ID’s final appeal. An interim debt order of £20 million issued against P&ID in December 2023 was never paid and remains outstanding.
Shell and the Niger Delta Pollution Claims
Roughly 14,000 people from the Ogale and Bille communities in Rivers State are pursuing Shell in English courts over decades of oil pollution. The litigation, filed in 2015, covers four sets of claims tied to Shell’s pipeline infrastructure in the Niger Delta.
The Bille claims cover more than 100 alleged spills between 2011 and 2013, mostly from the Nembe Creek Trunk Line, which the claimants say damaged around 13,200 hectares of mangrove swamp and destroyed the local fishing economy. The Ogale claims involve 131 alleged spills between 1989 and 2020. UN testing in the Ogale area in 2010 found groundwater contamination 1,000 times higher than Nigerian legal limits.
Shell fought for years to keep the case out of English courts, arguing a parent company owed no legal duty to residents in Nigeria. In February 2021, the UK Supreme Court ruled the claimants had “a good arguable case” that the parent bore liability for environmental harm caused by its Nigerian subsidiary, clarifying that parent companies can incur liability through management decisions, defective advice, group-wide policies, or holding out supervision over a subsidiary. Shell maintains the primary causes of damage in the region are crude oil theft, sabotage, and illegal refining by criminal gangs, and that it is not liable for the acts of third parties.
A preliminary issues hearing took place over four weeks in early 2025, and a full factual trial for the Bille claims is scheduled to begin in March 2027.
Shell’s Divestment and a New Suit
In March 2025, Shell completed the sale of the Shell Petroleum Development Company to a consortium called Renaissance, which renamed the entity Renaissance Africa Energy Company. The English litigation now names both Shell and Renaissance as defendants.
The sale itself has produced a separate case. HEDA Resource Centre, a Nigerian civil society organization, sued in the Federal High Court in Lagos in March 2025, arguing that the $2.4 billion license transfer violated the Petroleum Industry Act of 2021 because the required Environmental Evaluation Study was never conducted or disclosed. Proceedings began in May 2025.
The Ajaokuta Steel Settlement
Nigeria granted Global Infrastructure Holding Limited a ten-year concession over the Ajaokuta steel complex in 2004, later converted to 60% equity, then cancelled it in 2008 citing failure to meet performance targets and allegations of asset stripping. GIHL began international arbitration, and Nigeria eventually settled out of court, paying $496 million.
The payout has drawn its own scrutiny. A National Assembly investigation found GIHL had accumulated debts exceeding N24 billion against the assets of a related steel facility without board approval. Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan and others argued the $496 million was facilitated by a presidential committee rather than ordered by any court. As of December 2023, a joint parliamentary committee had called for formal investigations into both the original concession and the compensation, describing the process as “shrouded in secrecy.”
Suits Over Missing Public Funds
The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project has filed a run of smaller but politically charged lawsuits against Nigerian institutions over how public money is handled. Four recent filings stand out:
- A 2026 suit in the Federal High Court in Abuja seeking to compel the Central Bank of Nigeria to account for roughly N3 trillion flagged in the Auditor-General’s report, including more than N629 billion paid to “unknown beneficiaries” under the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme and over N1.44 trillion in operating surplus the CBN allegedly failed to remit to the Consolidated Revenue Fund.
- A December 2024 suit against President Tinubu and the Attorney General over N57 billion in missing humanitarian ministry funds, including N54.63 billion in unaccounted N-Power stipends and N2.61 billion for a school feeding programme reportedly never carried out.
- A June 2026 ruling by a Federal High Court in Lagos declaring the National Assembly’s vehicle and allowance scheme unlawful, finding N40 billion was spent on 465 vehicles and N70 billion on support allowances in violation of procurement laws.
- A June 2026 suit against the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited over its failure to account for approximately N5.9 billion reportedly spent on rebranding.
SERAP has also won at the regional level. In July 2022, the ECOWAS Court of Justice declared Nigeria’s 2021 suspension of Twitter unlawful and ordered the government not to repeat the ban.
Why the Stakes Are So High
The claims against and by Nigeria are large relative to the economy absorbing them. The naira weakened by 42% during 2024, and public debt rose to 52.3% of GDP that year from 41.5% in 2023. Inflation hit 33.2% in 2024 before moderating to 15.9% by early 2026 after a rebasing of the consumer price index. The African Development Bank estimated Nigeria’s poverty rate at 56% in 2024, and the government has set a target of raising domestic revenue to 18% of GDP by 2030, up from 13% in 2024. Against those numbers, an $11 billion arbitration award or a $79.5 billion tax claim is not an abstract legal figure. Most of these cases will not be resolved for years.