The long-running courtroom battle over Nigeria’s stalled Mambilla Hydroelectric Project descended into another round of uncertainty on Thursday, as federal prosecutors abandoned a scheduled cross-examination of their star witness and instead rushed to amend charges against former Power Minister, Dr. Olu Agunloye.
At exactly 10:20 a.m., inside Court 30 of the FCT High Court, Justice Jude Onwuegbuzie called the case—only for the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to admit that its lead investigator, identified as PW3, was unavailable.
In a surprise pivot, the prosecution requested permission to rewrite parts of its case, a move analysts say reflects nervousness over withstanding a robust cross-examination.
The judge approved the request without objection from the defence, vacating the dates previously set aside for testimony—September 22 and 25—and resetting the high-stakes session for October 9.
This marks the second revision of the case in just two months. The EFCC quietly dropped two contentious claims:
That Agunloye awarded a Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) contract “without financial appropriation.”
That he awarded the same contract “without cash backing.”
Legal observers note these charges would have been difficult to sustain. In a bid to fortify its case, the EFCC is leaning more heavily on its “disobedience to the President” claim—invoking Section 5 of Nigeria’s Constitution, which empowers ministers to act on behalf of the president within their ministries.
This tactic echoes an earlier adjustment made after PW2’s cross-examination unraveled the bribery narrative. Back then, the EFCC changed its allegation from a straightforward payoff—“The defendant took a bribe in October 2019 from Sunrise Company for a BOT contract awarded in May 2003”—to a more convoluted version, alleging the bribe was funneled “through Adesanya and Sotinrin.”
The Mambilla Hydroelectric Project—intended as Nigeria’s largest power station—has endured 22 years of political reversals. First awarded by Agunloye in 2003 under President Olusegun Obasanjo as a BOT scheme, the project was repeatedly cancelled and re-awarded under four successive presidents. Obasanjo himself testified before an international arbitration panel in January that procurement reforms he introduced in 2005 and 2007 were not retroactive, undermining key parts of the prosecution’s argument.
The dispute reached a boiling point after the Buhari administration’s 2017 re-award of the contract triggered arbitration in Paris, where Sunrise Power is demanding damages estimated in the billions of dollars. The EFCC’s case against Agunloye has been widely interpreted as an attempt to shield the government from liability while assigning blame for decades of missteps.
Justice Onwuegbuzie, adjourning proceedings, said the delay would allow PW3 to recover from illness before facing questioning. But court observers described the prosecution’s retreat as a tactical retreat: “Every amendment looks like an effort to dodge tough questions about the government’s own shifting positions,” one legal analyst commented outside the courtroom.
For Nigerians, the Mambilla project remains a symbol of unrealized potential—a hydroelectric giant that could transform the national grid yet remains trapped in legal and political wrangling. When PW3 finally enters the witness box in October, the outcome could influence not just Agunloye’s fate but the federal government’s standing in Paris and the future of a project once hailed as the crown jewel of Nigeria’s power ambitions.
