By Cham Faliya Sharon
In 2003, the federal government purportedly awarded a contract for the construction of the Mambila Hydroelectric Dam in Taraba State to a company called Sunrise Power, which is owned by one Chief Leno Adesanya. Sadly, ever since the contract was awarded, not even a brick was laid to even show that both the contractor and the federal government were serious about having the project done. But then, if you know how contracts are done in Nigeria or elsewhere – whether in the private sector or in government sectors – mobilization fees must have been paid to the contractor, and since zero work was done at the site by the contractor, such mobilization fee may have been pocketed by all the parties involved in this scheme, which is safe to be described as shady by all standards.
That was in 2003, and the contract for this gigantic project was billed at about $6bn. Now, fastforward to 2017 when President Muhammadu Buhari wanted to build this hydroelectric dam, and even awarded the contract to a Chinese firm with reputable experience in building such kind of monumental facilities. But before we proceed with how these economic criminals stymied him from executing the project through local and international court injunctions, I want us to count the number of years from 2003 to 2017. You have 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017.
How many years did you count between when the fraudulent contract was awarded and when President Muhammadu Buhari awarded it on a clean slate in 2017? Fourteen straight years, right? For 14 years, those dubious people refused to build it, and when a serious man came to build it, they threw all manner of spanners in the works, claiming breach of contract and even want damages of up to $2.3bn paid to them by the Nigerian government. They got the courts – both in Nigeria and overseas – to halt the execution of the project until the case is determined, which, as you can see, it is only starting in January 2025 in Paris!
Think about it: is that not wickedness of very extreme nature? They refused to do it, and they don’t want anyone to do it. And now they want damages paid to them for refusing to do what they were engaged to do! Very bold and shameless saboteurs and grifters, you might call them, right? Incidently, all the principal actors in this sordid act of sabotage are from a specific region of the county: President Olusegun Obasanjo, under whom the contract was awarded; Dr. Olu Agunloye, the Minister of Power who signed and awarded the contract; Chief Leno Adesanya, the owner of the company that got the contract, and Mr. Femi Falana, the lawyer who is helping the company to stop the federal government from executing the project and who is also seeking to milk the country huge sums of money for his client, as payment or reward for sabotaging the country in the guise of damages for breach of contract.
Even though, albeit belatedly, President Obasanjo is now claiming that he did not authorise the award of this contract to Sunrise Power; that his Federal Executive Council rejected the bid made by the company, and that Dr. Olu Agunloye, his own Minister of Power, unilaterally awarded the contract to the company without his approval while, on the other hand, this same Minister is still insisting that he got the approval of both President Obasanjo and the Federal Executive Council to award the contract. But whatever may be the case, if we are to believe Obasanjo on this matter, then we should be able to ask him what he did about the project since he claims to have declined awarding the contract to Sunrise Power. Did he award the contract to another suitable company to build the dam, or did he just simply wave it away? What really happened, so much that this company is now claiming damages over an alleged breach of contract?
I’m imagining how the story would have been narrated by a section of the Nigerian media if it were to be a major project outside northern Nigeria, and a President from the North, a Minister from the North, a contractor from the North, and a lawyer from the North, all combine together to frustrate its take-off much less its construction and completion. But then, that’s another issue on its own for another day. My main focus on this piece is to highlight how the commencement of the trial of the matter surrounding this Mambila Hydroelectric Dam in Paris has now become a blessing for President Muhammadu Buhari, coming after a minor group of pseudo-intellectuals and a handful of frustrated politicians alongside their hangers-on in northern Nigeria have been deliberately and mischievously using this unbuilt Mambila Hydroelectric Dam to try to diminish his successes as President and even try to paint him as a failure completely.
Actually, I’m willing to wager that many of them never even knew that there has been a proposal since the 1970s by the federal government to build this dam until the same Muhammadu Buhari made it as one of his cardinal campaign promises prior to the 2015 general elections. And because of their unmet personal needs from his administration or due to outright antagonism borne out of the political displacement his meteoric rise in politics caused them, they resorted to using the non-execution of this very project, which he brought to their consciousness against him in their desperate bid to paint him as a flop. They are always loud on this so that gullible listerners to their wacky tales can quickly ignore his unprecedented successes in road construction, housing development, railway revolution, ports development, electricity revolution, agricultural revolution, military procurements, new schools, social investment schemes, oil and gas development, industrial development, economic growth, and many others.
They wouldn’t want you to recall or realize that, even though his administration was deliberately hampered by saboteurs from building the Mambila Hydroelectric Dam through court processes, he has been able to build the Zungeru Hydroelectric Dam in Niger State, which has the capacity of generating 700MW of electricity and which is also tailored to serve as a wide basin of water for huge irrigation farming in the area. As it stands, the Zungeru Hydroelectric Dam is one of his biggest projects and achievements in Nigeria, They also wouldn’t want to discuss the fact that he also built the Dadin Kowa Hydroelectric Dam in Gombe State, which was also abandoned for 40 long years!
Happily, the court proceedings in Paris over this Mambila project has brought back the issue to the public realm, and it is a huge fortune for Buhari himself that he went there as a witness to testify on oath. Obasanjo was also there to testify, including the others who took part in this wonky scheme with him. But for Buhari, it became an excellent opportunity to have the records restated and discussed in public just as it also became a fortuitous opportunity for those hitherto deceived about his record to realize that the story is not as they were told. Many people have now become aware that only incurable dimwits or incurable psychopaths or incurable pseudologists will mock him for not building the Mambila Hydroelectric Dam.
By the way, to the frustrated false zealots working hard to diminish Buhari’s achievements as President, why didn’t your favourite politicians build the Mambila Hydroelectric Dam or any other dam or any other landmark project for that matter?