***The Agunloye trial is based on criminalisation conspiracy to avoid liabilities.
About three months ago, precisely on the 16th of July 2024, the Truth and Justice Group based in London, UK, observed in its article titled “Contracts, Crimes and Criminalisation of Mambilla” that the Agunloye trial was based on criminalisation conspiracy. We observed then the National Assembly of Nigeria was seeking to find the way out of the Mambilla stalemate and may inadvertently open the lid on the multiple contracts and crimes surrounding Mambilla, laying bare the criminalisation tool, initiated by the administration of former President Buhari, which tool is being employed by the Federal Government of Nigeria with a view to evade liabilities at the International Arbitration Panel in France. We are still waiting to hear what the Senate of the 10th National Assembly of a country with estimated 200 million population beleaguered with multiple national grid collapses has set out to do.
It is noteworthy that we have received several reactions from Nigeria attesting to the innocence of the former Minister, Dr. Olu Agunloye and noticed that most of the commentators resorted to the efficacy of prayers to extricate their man. However, it would be better if family members and friends of the embattled former Minister overlay the much-needed prayers with data and details of the processes and procedures of the trials in Nigeria and the arbitration in France. We all need to get better understanding of the Mambilla Malfeasance in its totality and only associates and family members of Dr Agunloye and justice minded individuals that can be trusted to take this task. This is why we are making a quick recap of current position of the Mambilla Malfeasance and Nigeria’s struggle to avoid liabilities for its impurities and impunities. It is to remind the public of the need to understand the details and to urge them to stand firmly for justice and truth.
For most part of this week starting from 21 October 2024, the FCT court under Mr. Jude Onwuegbuzie will allow the Defence to the cross-examine the former GTBank official, who is now a staff member of Jaiz Bank. After this, EFCC will continue its prosecution with “evidence” and more witnesses and when it closes its case, Agunloye will start his own defence, and thereafter, the judge will rule.
In the meantime, in Nigeria, the Agunloye’s defence team quickly spotted, from the onset, that the case was of a political nature not based on legalistic foundations and that this needed to be tackled urgently. It, therefore, has striven very hard to steer the court away from handing out its planned kangaroo judgement programmed to be delivered in February or March 2024 as an adjunct to the Statement of Defence of the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) at the International Arbitration in France.
So far, EFCC is still battling with its first Prosecution Witness out of the seven listed, and the judge is being constrained to show less brazen bias. The defence is also awaiting the Appeal Court judgement on the case filed in respect of significant bias exhibited by the court and the challenge of EFCC on its competence to prosecute not in accordance with its Enabling Act and in non-compliance with a Supreme Court ruling. If the Appeal Court rules in Agunloye’s favour, the case under Mr. Jude Onwuegbuzie in FCT Court, Apo will be quashed and reassigned to another court to start from scratch.
In the meantime, in France, the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) is cruising at full steam on the criminalisation strategy and making the former minister, Dr. Agunloye the central figure and the core of the statement of defence of the FGN at the Arbitration. The former President Obasanjo personally sent a signed testimony dated 17 July 2024 which said, “even though the contract limit was N25 million, the former minister awarded a N780 billion contract without permission” and that he (Obasanjo) “did not find out until twenty years after”. The former president Muhammadu Buhari also personally testified in a document dated 21 September 2024 about his own role in re-awarding the Mambilla Hydroelectric Power Project to another contractor. And recently, in October 2024, Nigeria’s sitting President Bola Tinubu, acting through his lawyers, sent in a rejoinder to the Arbitration Panel which claimed that Dr. Agunloye “awarded a contract of $6 billion or N780 billion in 2003 illegally.” Strangely the Mambilla contract awarded by Agunloye was no longer being treated as a Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) which carries no cost to the FGN, but as a procurement contract at a whopping sum of N780 billion. This is not true. Agunloye awarded a BOT contract. The President Tinubu’s embarrassing claims also included: “the findings of EFCC’s investigations have shed a new light on Dr. Agunloye’s behaviour making it now clear that the 2003 $6 billion award was prompted by corruption.” This is false, but it exposes the President of the Federal Government Nigeria and his lawyers as pre-empting Justice Jude Onwuegbuzie and announcing his expected judgement in the trial of Dr. Agunloye before his Court in Abuja. This portends grave dangers as the President has already quoted the yet to be delivered judgement in a trial that has not commenced beyond presenting the first Prosecution Witness; and has proceeded to present such in a formally signed official document at the International Arbitration Pannel in France to evade liabilities for impunities.
The Federal Government of Nigeria under President Bola Tinubu, through its lawyers, is also claiming that although it could “establish only three payments to Agunloye in 2019, totalling N5m for the 2003 contract of N780 billion, there must be other payments that have not been uncovered and insinuated that his children have bought expensive houses in the US”, citing the house of Mr. Jide Agunloye (Agunloye’s son) in Monroe, Connecticut, USA and alluding to it as a “proceeds of corruption”. The lawyers in France are advising Mr Jide Agunloye to sue the Nigerian prosecutors at the Arbitration Panel since his house in Monroe was acquired through a 30-year mortgage in 2007 and he still has 18 (eighteen) more years to pay on the mortgage while the Nigerian prosecutors called it “proceeds of corruption” in October 2024.
The Lawyers and Arbitration Panellists in France are wondering why the former minister Agunloye is being kept out of the Arbitration if he is indeed so central and critical to the case being made by the Federal Government of Nigeria. It is, however, evident that Agunloye is being deliberately kept away from the Arbitration even though his name and activities are all over in the Statements of Defence and Counter Claims of Nigeria. He is being held in Nigeria, where his passport has been seized by the government, and awaiting pre-determined kangaroo judgement as blurted out by the sitting Judge in one of his rulings on petty motions, and now being bandied around by the President’s lawyers at the International Arbitration in France.
We are in full agreement with a prominent statesman and senior advocate of law who concluded that all these melodrama and manoeuvres through criminalisation and the associated “scapegoat-isation” are no more than the antics of corrupt leaders to avoid liabilities at the Arbitration for fraudulent activities in the power sector over the last twenty-five years and for unethical actions by the government under their watch.
Dr. Anthony Ibrahim,
Truth and Justice Group
Camberwell Green, London. UK
