Nigeria’s victory in a long-running international arbitration over the Mambilla Hydroelectric Power Project has opened a new political battle over a $500,000 transfer made to the then-wife of former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar in 2003.
The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) tribunal in Paris rejected claims brought by Sunrise Power and Transmission Company Limited and its promoter, Leno Adesanya, against the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
The tribunal also ordered Sunrise and Adesanya to reimburse 75 percent of Nigeria’s legal fees and expenses, reported at $11.82 million, while assigning them 75 percent of the arbitration costs.
The ruling was a significant legal win for Abuja. It did not, however, amount to a criminal conviction of Atiku.
The available reporting on the award shows that the tribunal rejected Adesanya’s explanation for the payment to Jennifer Douglas, but does not show a finding that Atiku personally received a bribe, directed the contract award, or incurred legal or financial liability in the arbitration.
That distinction is now at the centre of a dispute between the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and Atiku, the African Democratic Congress (ADC) candidate for the 2027 presidential election.
What the tribunal decided
Sunrise’s dispute arose from a purported 2003 build-operate-transfer agreement for the Mambilla project in Taraba State. The company later sought billions of dollars in compensation.
In the latest arbitration, it also pursued a settlement- related claim reported at $400 million, comprising a $200 million settlement amount and a further $200 million default payment. The tribunal rejected those claims.
The panel held that Adesanya was bound by the arbitration provisions in the settlement agreement and addendum. It also found that it had jurisdiction over Nigeria’s counterclaim against Sunrise and Adesanya.
The respondents were ordered to pay Nigeria $9.32 million, plus interest at 10 percent a year compounded annually, after $2.5 million was to be released from funds held in ICC escrow.
The Presidency described the decision as the removal of the “single biggest legal hurdle” that had delayed the Mambilla project for years.
President Bola Tinubu praised the Nigerian legal team, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), and witnesses including ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo, the late President Muhammadu Buhari, and former ministers Babatunde Fashola and Suleiman Adamu.
Sunrise has not accepted that the matter is necessarily over. Adesanya said the company’s lawyers were reviewing the award and would advise on lawful next steps. He said Sunrise respected the arbitration process but considered it premature to comment fully before completing that review.
Why the $500,000 payment matters
The tribunal examined a transfer of $500,000 made on January 30, 2003, from China Castle Investments Limited, an offshore company controlled by Adesanya, to Douglas’s Citibank account in the United States.
Douglas was Atiku’s wife at the time. The payment came during negotiations over Mambilla and less than four months before a letter purportedly awarding Sunrise the project on May 22, 2003.
Adesanya told the tribunal that the transfer was a foreign-exchange transaction carried out for Atiku.
But reports based on the final award say he did not produce documents showing
the underlying naira payment, exchange rate, instructions from Atiku or his aides, correspondence about the transaction, or a commercial purpose for it.
He also did not establish that the company used to make the transfer was licensed to conduct foreign exchange transactions.
The tribunal reportedly noted that China
Castle, rather than Adesanya’s claimed bureaude-change business, made the transfer, and that the foreign-exchange activity was outside China Castle’s stated corporate purposes.
It also found inconsistencies in Adesanya’s evidence about his relationship with Douglas and his alleged efforts to obtain confirmation from Atiku’s representatives.
Neither Atiku nor Douglas testified in the arbitration. Adesanya said he could not secure Atiku’s participation and that Douglas would not take his calls.
The tribunal therefore rejected Adesanya’s explanation that the payment was a documented foreign-exchange transaction for Atiku.
The award’s treatment of the payment gives political force to the APC’s allegations. It does not, on the material publicly reported so far, resolve every separate question that would be required to establish that Atiku solicited or received a bribe.
The tribunal was deciding contractual and related claims between Sunrise, Adesanya and Nigeria, not conducting a criminal trial of Atiku.
APC says the episode disqualifies Atiku
In a statement signed by campaign spokesman Dele Alake, the APC Presidential Campaign Council said the payment, its timing and Atiku’s role in the government of ex-President Obasanjo showed that he had placed personal interests above Nigeria’s national interest.
It accused Atiku and former Power Minister Olu Agunloye of working together to advance an unlawful contract despite objections from Obasanjo and the Federal Executive Council.
The APC called on Atiku to withdraw from the 2027 presidential race, describing the $500,000 payment as only the beginning of what it said would be further revelations.
It also linked the controversy to Atiku’s campaign proposal for a production subsidy on locally refined petroleum products, arguing that voters in Taraba should remember the project’s stalled history.
The party’s argument rests on circumstantial connections: the timing of the payment, the recipient’s relationship with Atiku, Adesanya’s failure to substantiate the foreign exchange explanation, and Atiku’s influence as vice-president during the negotiations.
Those facts may justify scrutiny. They do not, by themselves, establish the criminal conclusion stated in the APC’s press release.
Atiku says APC is manufacturing a verdict
Atiku, through his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, challenged the APC to identify the paragraph in the award where the tribunal found that he accepted a bribe, abused his office, instructed Agunloye to award the contract, or participated in a corrupt conspiracy.
He said the tribunal’s rejection of Adesanya’s explanation was not equivalent to a finding that Atiku received a bribe.
He also stressed that he was not a party to the arbitration and said there was no evidence that the tribunal summoned him or ordered him to testify.
His central argument was that the APC was presenting an allegation examined
during arbitration as if it were a judgment against him..
“An allegation is not a finding. Suspicion is not proof. The rejection of one man’s
explanation is not the conviction of another man,” Atiku said, according to the reported response.
Atiku accused the APC of using the dispute to divert attention from inflation,
unemployment, insecurity and the cost of living. His response did not, in the reports reviewed, provide a detailed alternative account of the transfer itself or documentary evidence supporting Adesanya’s foreign-exchange explanation.
The older contract dispute remains unresolved in other forums
The Mambilla project has been contested for more than two decades. Obasanjo has said he did not authorise the 2003 agreement and that Federal Executive Council did not approve it.
An EFCC investigator told an Abuja court that Obasanjo directed Agunloye to withdraw the proposal and invite more investors, but that the minister issued the award letter the next day.
The EFCC is prosecuting Agunloye on charges including forgery, disobedience to a presidential directive and gratification.
Prosecutors allege that he awarded the project without budgetary provision, presidential approval or cash backing and received payments linked to Sunrise.
Agunloye has pleaded not guilty. Those allegations remain before the court and should not be treated as established facts.
The project’s planned capacity has also changed across its long history. Early versions were described as a 3,050- megawatt or 3,960-megawatt scheme, while later plans reduced the proposed output to roughly 1,500 megawatts to improve financial viability.
The differing figures reflect different iterations of the project rather than a single settled design.
What the ruling does—and does not—settle
The ICC award protects Nigeria from the immediate claims rejected by the tribunal and strengthens the government’s position in defending the original contract.
It also gives Abuja a stronger basis to pursue the project without the specific arbitration liability that had hung over it.
It does not automatically restart construction.
Financing, procurement, environmental
approvals, transmission infrastructure, project design and the outcome of related domestic proceedings still matter.
Nor does the award itself settle the political question of Atiku’s suitability for office. That question will be argued by voters and political parties, not decided by the ICC tribunal.
For now, the firmest conclusions are narrower. Nigeria won the arbitration. Sunrise and Adesanya face substantial cost orders and are reviewing their options.
The tribunal found Adesanya’s explanation for the $500,000 transfer unsupported. The APC has converted
that finding into a presidential-election attack, while Atiku says the party is converting suspicion into a verdict.
The public record supports scrutiny of the payment, but it requires the same discipline from all sides: a disputed payment is not, without more, a proven
bribe; and a political allegation is not a tribunal judgment.
