The All Progressives Congress, APC, Presidential Campaign Council has said former Vice President Atiku Abubakar is unfit to contest for Nigeria’s presidency, citing revelations from arbitration proceedings at the International Chamber of Commerce, ICC, in Paris.
In a press statement signed by its spokesman, Dele Alake, and issued in Abuja on September 18, 2026, the Council alleged that hearings in the arbitration filed by Sunrise Power and Transmission Company Ltd and its promoter, Leno Adesanya, over the stalled 3,960mw Mambilla Hydroelectric Power Project in Taraba State, showed that Atiku and former Minister of Power Olu Agunloye signed an illegal contract.
The statement described Atiku as the candidate of the African Democratic Congress, ADC.
According to the statement, the contract was signed in the final days of former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s first term, despite objections at the Federal Executive Council
The APC Campaign Council further alleged that months before the contract award, $500,000 was wired through an offshore company, China Castle Investment, to the US Citibank account of Atiku’s former wife, Jennifer Douglas. The statement said the transaction was flagged by Citibank and was referenced in a US Senate investigation titled _Keeping Foreign Corruption out of the United States: Four Case Histories_, in which it claimed Jennifer Douglas stated her husband sent the money.
The Council quoted the ICC Paris Tribunal as concluding: “There is a close connection in time between the moment the USD 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.”
According to the APC statement, the alleged illegal contract led Sunrise to file claims against Nigeria, including a $680 million settlement demand and a separate claim of over $2.7 billion in compensation and interest over the Mambilla project. It likened the case to the $11 billion P&ID claim over a gas project in Akwa Ibom.
The statement also claimed that Atiku declined to give evidence at the Paris hearing to support Sunrise’s assertion that the $500,000 was a foreign exchange transaction, while former Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Muhammadu Buhari appeared to defend Nigeria.
Citing Obasanjo’s book _My Watch_, the Council called on Atiku to withdraw from the presidential race, describing the alleged $500,000 payment as “the tip of the iceberg.”
It added that the people of Taraba State should note that the delay in the Mambilla project, which it described as potentially Nigeria’s biggest hydropower project, was linked to those involved in the disputed contract.
