African Democratic Congress ( ADC) Presidential Candidate, Atiku Abubakar, has challenged the All Progressives Congress (APC) to produce evidence that an arbitration tribunal found him guilty of corruption in respect of the Mambilla Power Project.
Atiku, in a statement by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, on Friday, accused the APC of allegedly seeking to manufacture a corruption verdict against him, outside of the position of the tribunal.
The former Vice President, who accused the APC Campaign Council of allegedly distorting the outcome of the Mambilla arbitration, 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.”
According to him, “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, Atiku said, 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, while dismissing the claim that he “chose to stay away” after purportedly being summoned by the tribunal, described assertion as another example of an allegation being expanded beyond what the reported record establishes.
The former Vice President explained that he was not a party to the arbitration and did not testify before the tribunal, noting that “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.”
He stated that 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.”
The ADC candidate stated that the Mambilla controversy should not be used to distract Nigerians from the issues on which the 2027 election will ultimately be decided, including the cost of living, jobs, security and the consequences of the Tinubu administration’s economic policies.
