Where the carcass is, there the vultures gather. (Matthew 24:28 and Luke 17:37).
Those two verses of the scripture were what came to mind on receiving the news of the dismissal of the multi-billion-dollar claims by Sunrise Power and Transmission Company Limited regarding the long-stalled Mambilla Hydroelectric Power by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) arbitration tribunal in Paris on Thursday last week. Nigeria and Nigerians must count themselves lucky, that the outcome, perhaps more than just another verdict, is actually a decisive blow to the solar plexus of those powerful, unscrupulous and rapacious entities for whom Nigeria, our beloved country, only exist to be serially gang-raped.
It’s hard to imagine what would have happened had the ‘vultures’ succeeded in their case against the republic. As certain as the day, Leno Adesanya and his Sunrise Power would have carted home the sum of $400 million ($200 million settlement plus $200 million default payment) for doing practically nothing for the country (at least that was what the ICC found). The Nigerian government have had to cough of an additional penalty of $2.35 billion in compensation and interest!
If iniquity could not have been more blatant, so has the indulgent long parted with the notion of shame!
Surely, Nigerians must find the story of how the country got itself into this mess, particularly the role played by the central figures, particularly confounding.
An Olu Agunloye, then Minister of Power and Steel, awarding a Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) contract to Sunrise Power to construct a 3,050-megawatt plant, contrary to an earlier specific and unambiguous directive by the Federal Executive Council that the minister halt further action on a memo through which he earlier had sought authorisation.
Sunrise Power on the basis of a flawed agreement, initiating arbitration suit at the International Court of Arbitration seeking $2.35 billion for alleged ‘breach of contract. And then some highly placed officials of the Muhammadu Buhari administration, led by the chief law officer of the federation, Abubakar Malami, a learned Silk, concocting a flawed $200 million so-called settlement agreement with Sunrise, with many objectionable clauses tilted against Nigeria supposedly to get Sunrise to drop the suit. And then the president, smelling rat, refusing to sign off on the ‘settlement’, hence a second ICC arbitration seeking a $400 million penalty.
Interesting, isn’t it. Of course, the sum total of Sunrise Power’s claims was that Nigeria breached contractual obligations under a 2020 settlement agreement and its addendum. Relying on agreements that were for all practical purposes a nullity being tainted with fraud, he did not hesitate to push for $400 million ($200 million settlement plus $200 million default payment) and an additional $2.35 billion in compensation and interest.
It gets more interesting that the tribunal, would in the course of its investigations, find that Sunrise promoter Leno Adesanya had in the course of the prospecting cycle, distributed millions of dollars to the families and entities of highly influential political figures to consolidate control over the project. Among the welfare package was a $500,000 payment in January 2003 to the then-wife of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, and other prominent government officials.
It is painfully the case the once renowned Mambilla Plateau and its Hydropower potentials have become a byword for corruption at the highest levels. Now, for all its acclaimed potentials and promises, the plateau like those other abused jewels in the Nigerian landscape, lies prostrate while the rest of us are left to lament its slow death. No thanks to the vultures that have been hovering around hoping, by some chance that the ‘beast’ might at some point give up the ghost; few Nigerians these days remember its famed lush green vegetation, the sprawling elevation at 1,524 to 1,800 meters above sea level – the highest in Nigeria; the massive tea plantations (Highland Tea), extensive cattle ranches, the scenic waterfalls of Nguroje and Barup, and of course the deep valleys and fast-flowing rivers in all their splendours that makes the Mambilla the envy of the world.
Yet, it bears stating that the Sunrise debacle is neither novel nor spectacular. If anything, it is only different from the infamous case of the Process and Industrial Developments Limited (PandID) in details. Nigerians will surely recall the story of the British Virgin Islands-registered shell company that became famous for a massive $11 billion legal and arbitration dispute against Nigeria. Then, the subject matter was a 20-year Gas Supply and Processing Agreement (GSPA) with Nigeria’s Ministry of Petroleum Resources. Whereas PandID’s claim was that the federal government had neither turned the sod not to talk of building the gas pipelines to deliver gas to its facility, there was also no iota of proof that PandID had even acquired land on which to build the plant to receive the wet gas! Yet Nigeria’s head was slated for the guillotine.
And all of these because of the many loopholes in the agreement all of which were inserted by officials of the NNPC and the justice ministry; and to further imagine that the PandID promoters had the effrontery to drag the federal government before a private arbitration tribunal which awarded it a whopping $6.6 billion for lost profits, which, with interest, grew to $11 billion.
Thanks to the English Commercial Court led by Justice Robin Knowles, the story would have been completely different. It was he that set aside the multi-billion dollar award in October 2023, ruling it was obtained through systemic fraud, bribery, and severe abuses of the legal process. The UK Supreme Court would equally dismiss PandID’s final appeal on legal costs in October 2025, ruling that PandID must pay Nigeria’s extensive legal costs in British Pounds.
The same could be said of the Ajaokuta Steel and the ancillary companies over which the country continues to hang its steel aspirations. Nigerians have since lost count of the number of agreements said to have been entered into in their name all of which have rendered our treasury poorer and the nation short-changed. Like the Sunrise Power story, the running thread across all of them is the same: Nigeria is a country to be exploited even where there is no provable value to be delivered.
By the way, where is Leno Adesanya? Atiku Abubakar, we know is running – again – for the presidency in 2027; Malami, who has only recently forfeited hundreds of billions of naira of assets to the federal government, also aspires to govern his home state of Kebbi also in 2027. As for Olu Agunloye, the last we heard is that he’s also answering to charges of official corruption and forgery. Lest I forget, the one-time Minister of Power, Saleh Mamman is currently doing term after being convicted of diverting humongous amounts from the Mambilla and Zungeru hydroelectric power projects.
As they say in these parts – this is how we roll!