Mambilla: Produce evidence of tribunal indicting me for corruption, Atiku dares APC

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has accused the APC Campaign Council of deliberately distorting the outcome of the Mambilla arbitration.

Responding to the demand of the APC Council that he should quit the 2027 race, Atiku said the ruling party has taken a tribunal award, amputated its legal meaning, stuffed the gaps with political propaganda and presented the result to Nigerians as a corruption verdict against him when no such verdict was delivered.

Atiku said the distortion rests on a false and intellectually lazy assumption: that because he served as Vice President in the Obasanjo administration, every action taken by that government must automatically be attributed to him.

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“History itself demolishes that argument. When the controversial third-term project arose under the same Obasanjo–Atiku administration, Atiku was not treated as a participant merely because he was Vice President.”

“He opposed it openly and stood against it. Nigerians understood then, as they should understand now, that serving in an administration does not make every office holder personally responsible for every policy, scheme or decision associated with that government.

“The same principle applies to Mambilla,” Atiku said. “I was not a member of the technical process that evaluated the competing proposals and recommended Sunrise. I did not sit on the procurement panel. I did not award the contract. So anyone alleging that I manipulated that process has a simple responsibility: show the instruction I gave, show the intervention I made, and show the paragraph of the tribunal award where that corrupt influence was found,” Atiku said in the statement issued by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu.

He challenged the APC to produce the exact portion of the final award where the tribunal found that he collected a $500,000 bribe, instructed former Power Minister Olu Agunloye to award the Mambilla contract to Sunrise, abused his office or participated in a corrupt conspiracy to procure the contract.

“There is no such finding,” Atiku said.

“What the APC has done is intellectually dishonest. It has converted suspicion into guilt, an unexplained transaction into a proven bribe, and an allegation canvassed before arbitrators into a verdict the arbitrators themselves never delivered. That is not an interpretation of the award. It is a political fabrication.”

Atiku said the facts should be stated without embellishment.

“The tribunal examined the $500,000 transferred by Leno Adesanya through China Castle Investments to Jennifer Douglas, rejected Adesanya’s explanation that it arose from a foreign-exchange transaction and expressed concerns about the absence of documentary evidence supporting that explanation.

“But rejecting Adesanya’s explanation is fundamentally different from finding that Atiku received a bribe or corruptly used his office to secure the Sunrise contract.

“The APC cannot manufacture the missing finding simply because the actual award does not provide the political conclusion it desperately wants.

“Nigeria alleged before the tribunal that the transfer was connected to the disputed Mambilla contract. Sunrise and Adesanya denied that allegation. Adesanya offered an explanation which the tribunal did not accept. But an unsuccessful explanation by Leno Adesanya does not automatically become a corruption verdict against Atiku Abubakar.

“If the tribunal wanted to find that the $500,000 was a bribe paid to Atiku, it could have said so plainly. If it wanted to find that Atiku abused his office to procure the contract for Sunrise, it could have said so plainly. The APC cannot insert into an international arbitral award words and conclusions that the arbitrators themselves did not put there.”

Atiku also rejected the assertion that he “chose to stay away” after supposedly being summoned by the tribunal, describing the claim as another example of an allegation being expanded beyond what the reported record establishes.

“For the avoidance of doubt, I was not a party to the arbitration and I did not testify before the tribunal. The reported contents of the award do not establish that the tribunal summoned me, ordered me to testify or found that I disobeyed any directive to appear.

“There is a world of difference between a party to an arbitration attempting to secure somebody’s testimony and the tribunal itself summoning that person to appear. Those distinctions matter. The APC cannot erase them simply because doing so makes for a more convenient headline.”

Atiku noted that former Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Muhammadu Buhari testified on behalf of Nigeria, while former ministers Babatunde Fashola and Suleiman Adamu were also among those who participated in Nigeria’s defence.

He said their participation was a matter of record, but their appearance could not reasonably be transformed into evidence that Atiku himself was summoned by the tribunal and refused to appear.

Atiku further said the APC’s attempt to portray him as though he had been adjudged liable in the arbitration ignores another elementary fact: the proceedings were between Sunrise Power and Transmission Company Limited, Leno Adesanya and the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

He said the central question in the Mambilla controversy remained narrow and should not be buried beneath campaign rhetoric.

“The question is not whether the $500,000 transaction deserved scrutiny. It did, and it was scrutinised. The question is whether the tribunal took the further step the APC now attributes to it and found that Atiku Abubakar received a bribe and corruptly influenced the award of the Mambilla project.

“Let the APC produce that finding. Let it identify the paragraph where the tribunal found that Atiku solicited a bribe.

“Let it identify the paragraph where the tribunal found that Atiku received $500,000 in exchange for influencing the Mambilla contract. Let it identify the paragraph where the tribunal found that Atiku instructed Olu Agunloye to award the contract to Sunrise.

“And let it identify the paragraph where the tribunal found Atiku culpable of corruption in relation to the project.

“These are not questions of political opinion. They are questions of record. They have factual answers. If the APC has those paragraphs, it should publish them in full and allow Nigerians to read the words of the tribunal themselves.”