Former President Obasanjo eloquently described the pervasive corruption in Nigeria while brandishing a mysterious document at the Mambilla arbitration in France
… former President brandished unvetted “Council Conclusions,” which he told the International Court had not been tampered with by the prevalent corrupt practices in his country.
The Mambilla International Arbitration in France opened yet another facet of the former two-time president of Nigeria, Mr. Olusegun Obasanjo, the man that BBC HARDTalk recently described to his face as one “with great capacity for putting a very rosy tint on his bad records” and which also labelled him as the “grandfather of corruption in Nigeria.” At the International Arbitration Court, the former President Obasanjo eloquently elaborated on the high level of corruption in his country, and how this is pervasive in government.
But when he was confronted that he fabricated a perverted “21 May 2003 Federal Executive Council Conclusions,” which he brandished at the arbitration court, he promptly denied. The “Council Conclusions” were said to be unvetted and not derived from any adopted Minutes of any of the Meetings of the Federal Executive Council of Nigeria. The document was said to have only surfaced in 2022 when the strategy for conspiracy and criminalisation was being devised by some “smart lawyers” serving under former President Muhammadu Buhari to cover up mismanagement and mishandlings in the power sector in Nigeria.
The mysterious document referred to as “Obasanjo Council Conclusions”, was coded as DOC-OCC. It never surfaced from 2003 to 2007 when Mr. Obasanjo was the President of Nigeria and was also the de facto Minister of Power because, at this period, he transferred all power sector projects to the Office of the President in Nigeria. DOC-OCC did not surface when Sunrise and its Chinese partners were parading the 2003 BOT contract before former President Obasanjo and his ministers; and not even when the senior Nigerian lawyer, Mr. Afe Babalola wrote to the Federal Government in February 2005 to point out that the 2003 Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) contract was legitimate and binding on Nigeria.
In the early part of 2007, when President Obasanjo split the Mambilla project into pieces and formally awarded a component for $1.4 billion to a company as a procurement contract, setting aside the 2003 BOT contract to Sunrise, there was no reference to DOC-OCC. In September 2007, when President Yar’Adua’s investigation on the validity of the 2003 contract returned a “validly awarded contract,” Mr. Obasanjo’s DOC-OCC did not surface. In 2008, when President Yar’Adua formally cancelled President Obasanjo’s $1.4 billion contract and re-awarded the complete Mambilla project back to Sunrise, the mysterious DOC-OCC did not surface.
Throughout the five-year period, 2008 to 2012, when Presidents Umaru Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan put together the grand Mambilla contract labelled GPEA-2012 re-awarding the complete Hydroelectric Power Project to Sunrise and his Chinese partners, the infamous DOC-OCC did not rear its head.
In 2015 and 2016, when President Buhari gave directives to his Minister of Power, Mr Ramaj Babat Fashola that the GPEA 2012 Agreement should be honoured to enable the execution of the Mambilla project, the DOC-OCC, suspected to be fraudulent, did not surface. From 2019 to 2020, when five ministers under President Muhammadu Buhari negotiated and signed settlement agreements with Sunrise, the suspicious DOC-OCC did not arise from anywhere.
However, after the Nigerian strategists decided to criminalise the players in the sector, former President Obasanjo announced that he was just becoming aware of the 2003 BOT contract, 20 years after, and he triumphantly produced DOC-OCC from the “archives”.
Here in France, former President Obasanjo contradicted himself by admitting that his Minister, Mr. Agunloye did not break any Nigerian law in awarding the 2003 contract. At the Arbitration, Mr. Obasanjo also admitted that he later promulgated the Procurement Act and ICRC Act in 2005 to prevent the reoccurrence of another Mr. Agunloye awarding a contract in own capacity as a sitting minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria without Federal Executive Council approval.
Mr. Olusegun Obasanjo, former President of Nigeria was the same elder statesman from Nigeria who bowed his head solemnly before the jury at the International Arbitration Court in France and said, “My Lord, Yes, I own a modern university in Nigeria. I established the university with the money I made from running a secondary school, which I had earlier established.”
As fate would have it, of the two elderly men and former presidents who testified in France, one voluntarily lied, but the other held out as a fearless elder unable to lie bare-facedly. The latter, Malam Buhari, admitted that the Federal Government of Nigeria duly awarded the 2003 BOT contract to Messrs Sunrise Power and Transmission Company, concurring with two former Nigerian presidents, Malam Umaru Yar’Adua and Dr. Goodluck Jonathan. The former President Malam Buhari thus contradicted the evidence given by another Nigerian former president, Mr. Obasanjo. At the arbitration, former President Buhari aligned himself with the positions of Senior Advocates of Nigeria like Mr. Afe Babalola, Professor Gbolahan Elias, Mr. Femi Falana and Mr. Wole Olanipekun who, earlier on, had formally tabled their opinions separately before the Nigerian presidents including Mr. Obasanjo and Malam Buhari that the 2003 BOT contract awarded by Mr. Agunloye was validly and legitimately awarded.
Mr. J. F. Hastings. 4 February 2025
Palais Garnier. Paris.
