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Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has disclosed his reasons for testifying at the Mambilla Power Project arbitration holding in France.
Mr Obasanjo testified in the ongoing arbitration on Wednesday. Before that, ex-President Muhammadu Buhari had equally testified.
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“I volunteered myself to testify in this case. Nobody sent me to do so. President Tinubu did not ask me to do so as speculated. I didn’t speak to anybody on my intention to testify,” Mr Obasanjo said in an interview with PREMIUM TIMES from Paris.
“I decided to testify because of the statement made on the matter by Olu Agunloye. I considered his claims atrocious and thought it necessary to set the records straight,” he added.
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Sunrise Power, which claimed to have been awarded a $6 billion contract to build, operate and transfer the power plant by the Obasanjo administration in May 2003, is in arbitration with Nigeria at the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris.
The company has alleged a breach of contract by the Nigerian Government and is seeking monetary compensation of $2.3 billion to cover what it had spent on financial and legal consultants.
Mr Agunloye was the minister of power under whom the contract was awarded.
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Earlier, Mr Obasanjo had blamed the former minister for mismanaging the project between 1999 and 2003.
In 2023, while responding to Mr Obasanjo’s allegation, which he said was “baseless, false and malicious,” he noted that the investment Sunrise Power needed to execute the project to the completion stage was valued at a maximum of $6 billion by four ministers of power and Mr Obasanjo before he himself became minister of power.
The Nigerian Government has claimed that fraud was involved in awarding the contract and that some public officials were also corrupted in the process.
In the past, the former Nigerian president had requested Mr Agunloye to publicly disclose where he got the authority to award the contract.
Mr Agunloye said the contract was awarded with Mr Obasanjo’s approval.
Citing exclusive documents, The Cable newspaper reported that Olusegun Agagu, Nigeria’s minister of power before Mr Agunloye took office, wrote Mr Obasanjo in November 2002, seeking approval to invite Tafag Nigeria Limited and Sunrise Power for comprehensive negotiations on the construction of the power plant.
The news outlet in December 2023 stated that Mr Obasanjo, in November 2002, granted the minister permission to invite the two companies, saying, “Please give the two the same parameter, i.e. part participation not more than 25% higher than prevailing tariff of the thermal plant.”
The media organisation noted that Mr Agunloye had, on 7 April 2003, when he was already a minister of power, written to the former president demanding that the invitation of Sunrise Power and Lemna International be recalled.
Afterwards, Mr Agunloye requested Mr Obasanjo’s approval to issue a letter of comfort to Sunrise Power for the BOT contract.
Mr Obasanjo, in his reaction to the request, said he had no objection but asked him “to bring a memo to Council to include comparison with coal-fired plant for 4000MW to 5000MW”.
“What is abundantly clear is that at no time did Dr Agunloye comply with the foregoing directive by bringing a memo to Council to include the [stated] comparison, nor can my directive be stretched to be inclusive of any approval to award any contract to Sunrise Power and Transmission Company Limited or any other person,” Mr Obasanjo was quoted as saying in a letter to Lateef Fagbemi, Nigeria’s attorney general and minister of Justice.
“In any event, my directive as stated above cannot by any stretch of imagination reasonably be extended to mean that issuing “a letter of comfort” translates to an award of contract. It is therefore clear that at no time was any contract awarded to Sunrise Power by anyone in my Administration,” he added.
In 2003, Mr Agunloye wrote a letter to Sunrise Power, awarding the contract.
A day prior, the Federal Executive Council had stepped down his memo requesting the approval to proceed.
According to Mr Obasanjo, no minister had the authority to commit Nigeria to beyond N25 million without presidential approval when he was in office.
“In particular, the embarrassment to Nigeria caused by these acts of fraud, deceit and malfeasance of Dr Agunloye and others of his ilk does no good to Nigeria or Nigerians. I have therefore resolved to make myself available to testify in Arbitration or any forum should you consider it necessary in our national interest,” he said at the time.
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