Nigeria has acquired something that governments usually purchase only after discovering that lawyers are cheaper than losing lawsuits: a renowned international arbitration specialist. Abuja has retained Paul Hastings, a heavyweight American law firm, to help defend two investment disputes before the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). The timing is instructive. Nigeria faces unquantified but potentially very large financial exposure in both proceedings, yet neither case has reached the stage at which the public can reliably attach a dollar figure to the government’s worst-case liability. That uncertainty is precisely what should worry Abuja.
The first dispute, Korea National Oil Corporation (KNOC) and its Nigerian subsidiaries v Nigeria, concerns oil blocks OPL 321 and OPL 323 and proceeds under the Nigeria-South Korea bilateral investment treaty. The case has been running since 2023 and remains unresolved. The public record does not disclose the claimants’ ultimate damages demand. Historical sums associated with the blocks run into hundreds of millions of dollars, while KNOC has previously sought repayment of roughly $92m in payments connected with the disputed transaction. But that is not a ceiling on potential treaty damages. Interest, lost investment value and costs could alter the arithmetic considerably.
The second case is newer, and potentially more awkward. Jupiter Lithium and others v Nigeria, registered in June 2026, concerns mining interests in Kaduna State and proceeds under the Nigeria-UK investment treaty. Again, the quantum is not publicly established. Public descriptions of the underlying lithium opportunity have run into the billions, but that should not be confused with the claimant’s damages demand. Arbitration is not an auction in which Nigeria automatically pays the headline valuation of a mineral deposit. Still, Abuja would be foolish to comfort itself with the absence of a number. An undisclosed liability is not a nonexistent liability. It is simply a liability whose invoice has not yet arrived.
The choice of counsel suggests that the government understands this. Paul Hastings is not being hired to conduct a seminar in international law. Nigeria needs specialists capable of defending a sovereign nation before a tribunal dealing with treaty protections, jurisdiction, causation, valuation, damages and the particularly unforgiving mathematics of investment arbitration. The arrival at Paul Hastings of Elizabeth Oger-Gross and Nigerian arbitration specialist Tolu Obamuroh, formerly of White & Case, is especially notable. They bring experience of Nigeria’s international disputes and familiarity with Nigeria’s defense. That is sensible.
But the larger question is why Nigeria repeatedly finds itself paying world-class lawyers to defend decisions that ought, ideally, to have been designed to withstand international scrutiny in the first place.
This is where the two cases become more than litigation. Nigeria desperately wants foreign investment. The Tinubu administration is courting capital into hydrocarbons, mining and critical minerals, while insisting that Nigeria is open for business. Yet investors care about more than ministerial speeches and investment summits. They care about whether licenses mean what they say, whether contracts survive political transitions, whether regulatory decisions follow due process and whether disputes can be resolved without the state changing the rules halfway through the game.
That is why investment treaties matter. They are not merely devices by which foreigners sue governments. They are promises by governments that investors will receive certain standards of treatment. Nigeria may ultimately win both cases. It may also lose one or both. At present, nobody can responsibly say whether the combined liability is $100m, $500m, $1bn or something considerably different. But uncertainty itself has a price.
There is also a useful lesson in the Jupiter litigation. Nigeria is attempting to transform its mineral wealth into an economic asset. Lithium is no longer an obscure geological curiosity; it sits at the heart of the global scramble for batteries, electric vehicles and critical-mineral supply chains. If foreign investors conclude that Nigerian mining titles are vulnerable to arbitrary revocation or administrative unpredictability, Abuja’s grand diversification strategy becomes rather less grand.
The KNOC dispute carries a similar warning for oil and gas. Nigeria cannot simultaneously demand foreign capital, invite investors to commit hundreds of millions of dollars and then regard the contractual and treaty protections surrounding those investments as irritating technicalities. Nigeria has rights; the investor has rights; and lawyers exist because the two sometimes disagree about where one ends and the other begins. Hiring an eminent arbitration team is therefore prudent. But it is also a reminder that prevention is usually cheaper than litigation.
Nigeria’s immediate objective should be to defend these cases intelligently and minimize any eventual award. Its longer-term objective should be more ambitious: make sure that future administrations have fewer reasons to retain expensive international arbitrators. A government that wants investment should not merely advertise its mineral deposits and oil blocks. It should make its promises credible. Because in international arbitration, someone eventually, sends the bill.