The All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Campaign Council (PCC) has called on the presidential candidate of African Democratic Congress (ADC), Atiku Abubakar to quit 2027 presidential race, as the $500,000 bribe reverberated in Paris at the International Arbitration Tribunal under the auspices of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC).
Spokesman of the APC Presidential Campaign Council, Dele Alake in a statement issued Friday said the former Vice President is unfit to be President of Nigeria because he has once again proven he would compromise Nigeria’s best interests for personal, fiduciary gain.
He added that Atiku’s legendary corruption reverberated in Paris at the International Arbitration Tribunal under the auspices of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC).
The spokesman explained that hearings in the arbitration filed by Sunrise Power and Transmission Company Ltd (Sunrise) and Leno Adesanya over the stalled 3960mw Mambila Hydroelectric Power Project in Taraba State revealed that Atiku and former Power Minister, Olu Agunloye worked in cahoots to sign an illegal power contract with Sunrise.
Alake added that the backdoor signing of the contract in the dying days of then President Olusegun Obasanjo’s first term, when Atiku wielded enormous power, put Nigeria in a serious financial peril, despite Obasanjo’s objection and reservations at the Federal Executive Council meeting.
The spokesman recalled that at the hearing in Paris, Atiku, to avoid embarrassment, chose to stay away to give evidence in support of Sunrise and Leno Adesanya’s specious claim that the $500,000 was a foreign exchange transaction.
Alake emphasised that although the Tribunal requested Atiku’s witness statement, Adesanya shielded Atiku and Jennifer Douglas by lying.
In contrast, he noted that Obasanjo and President Muhammadu Buhari went to Paris to defend Nigeria and help stave off a liability that the country can ill-afford to redeem in these lean times.
He noted: “Atiku’s greed, however, propelled him to disobey the council and President Obasanjo, months after Leno Adesanya, through an offshore account, China Castle Investment, wired $500,000 to the US Citibank account of his now-divorced wife, Jennifer Douglas.
“The money arrived in tranches, raising red flags at Citibank and in the United States. The wired money and other suspicious transfers totalling $40 million surfaced in a US Senate investigation into Atiku and other corrupt leaders.
“In the US Senate report titled: “Keeping Foreign Corruption out of the United States: Four Case Histories”, Jennifer said her husband sent the money. She said she was not familiar with the offshore company that wired the money.
“Atiku’s treasonable act, after the Nigerian government declined to go ahead with the illegal contract, led Sunrise and Leno Adesanya to make a claim against the Federal Republic of Nigeria, demanding $680 million as a settlement sum and interest in respect of another arbitration in which it is claiming over $2.7 billion in compensation and interest relating to disputes associated with the development of the Mambilla Hydro Power project.”
Alake stressed that as the ICC Paris Tribunal concluded: “There is a close connection in time between the moment the $500,000 payment was made to the wife of Vice-President Abubakar on 30 January 2003 and the alleged award of the BOT contract to Sunrise on 22 May 2003.”
The spokesman added that the people of Taraba State should also note that Atiku, who plans to pull wool over their eyes and bamboozle his way to the presidency as a pro-petrol-subsidy candidate, is one of the people responsible for the stalled kick-off of what would have been the biggest hydro-power project in Nigeria, with many economic spin-offs for the people of the state.
He said Nigeria fought valiantly to dodge this huge liability, echoing a similar attempt by another rogue company, Process and Industrial Development (P&ID), to extract an $11 billion claim from our country for a phantom gas project in Akwa Ibom that the company did not spend a dime on.
Alake said: “By collecting a $500,000 bribe from Leno Adesanya to approve a Build-Operate-Transfer contract to a company with no scintilla of experience in hydro power generation, Atiku has proven he is one of the enablers of local and international predatory and exploitative entities out to defraud our country.
“The APC Campaign called on Abubakar Atiku to do himself a rare honour by bowing out of the presidential race, as the $500,000 bribe is just the tip of the iceberg of the revelations to come about his monumental corruption.”