Mambilla Project Scandal: TDF Backs Calls For Atiku’s Exit From Presidential Race
By Sunday Etuka
The Democratic Front (TDF) has aligned itself with the position taken by the Minister of Solid Minerals and Spokesman of the APC Presidential Campaign Council, Dele Alake, urging former Vice President Atiku Abubakar to withdraw from the presidential race over his alleged role in the controversial award of the 3,960 megawatt Mambila Hydroelectric Power Project to Sunrise Power and Transmission Company Limited in 2003.
In a statement signed by its Chairman, Danjuma Muhammad, and Secretary, Wale Adedayo, TDF said a recent ruling by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) Arbitration tribunal in Paris, in the case of Sunrise Power and Transmission Company versus the Federal Government of Nigeria, implicated Atiku Abubakar alongside former Power Minister Olu Agunloye in securing an allegedly irregular approval for the contract award.
The group noted that a $500,000 payment made by a beneficiary of the contract into an account belonging to Atiku’s former wife, Jennifer Douglas Abubakar, had raised questions about the circumstances surrounding the deal. TDF said the tribunal’s findings revealed that Leno Adesanya, through an entity called China Castle Investment, wired the funds into the account in the United States.
TDF argued that the stalled project, which was expected to add about 3,050 megawatts to the national grid, has contributed to underdevelopment in northern Nigeria.
It also referenced an earlier statement in which it had called on Atiku to clarify past allegations involving offshore transfers into his former wife’s account before questioning President Bola Tinubu’s decades old civil forfeiture case in the United States.
The group described the award of the contract to Sunrise Power and Transmission Company, which it said lacked demonstrated experience in hydroelectric power projects, as a breach of Nigeria’s Public Procurement Act and of the public trust expected of government officials.
TDF said it was on this basis that it supported Alake’s call for Atiku’s withdrawal from the 2027 presidential race, saying doing so would spare Nigeria further embarrassment.
