A Federal High Court in Abuja yesterday sentenced a former Minister of Power, Saleh Mamman, to 75 years’ jail term in absentia following his conviction of money laundering to the tune of N33.8 billion, being part of funds for the construction of 3050 megawatts (MW) Mambilla hydropower project in Taraba State.
The power project, with a contract cost of N2.1 trillion, is yet to begin, over 40 years after it was initiated. It has also been delayed since 2017 after the Federal Ministry of Power got a Certificate of No Objection for it.
When completed, Mambilla hydropower will be Nigeria’s biggest power plant. It is aimed to increase electricity access to the country; stimulate economic growth, enhance the living standards of millions of Nigerians and increase power export to Niger, Togo, Benin and Chad.
The project is also expected to increase Nigeria’s current electricity generation by 30 per cent and the country’s baseload electricity generation capacity, improve grid stability and make the country meet its 90% electricity access rate by 2030.
Justice James Omotosho, who convicted Mamman in all the 12 counts preferred against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), ordered that the sentence shall run consecutively and not concurrently.
Daily Trust reports that Justice Omotosho had on May 7, convicted Mamman, who recently joined the Taraba State governorship race under the All Progressives Congress (APC), in absentia over allegations of money laundering.
Justice Omotosho held that the EFCC was able to establish the 12-count amended charge against the defendant beyond reasonable doubt.
The judge explained that Mamman’s absence in court on Wednesday and during his conviction was a deliberate attempt to stop the wheel of justice.
He agreed with the EFCC’s lawyer, Rotimi Oyedepo (SAN), that though the defendant was not in court, the provisions of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA), 2015, gave the court the power to proceed with the sentencing.
Justice Omotosho held that the ex-minister cannot claim to have suffered a miscarriage of justice. He consequently sentenced the convict to seven years’ imprisonment on counts one, two, three, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11 and 12 without an option of fine.
Mamman was also sentenced to a three-year jail term on Count 4 with an option of a fine of N10 million and two years’ imprisonment on Count 5 without an option of fine. The judge ordered that the sentence shall run consecutively and shall commence from the date of Mamman’s arrest.
Go after Mamman, court tells INTERPOL, others
Justice Omotosho subsequently directed security agencies and INTERPOL to go after the former minister and arrest him anywhere he is sighted and hand him over to the Nigerian Correctional Services for his jail term.
Similarly, the judge also granted an application by the prosecution counsel, seeking the final forfeiture of Mamman’s two properties located in choice areas in Abuja. The ex-minister’s lawyer, Mohammed Ahmed, did not challenge the application.
Justice Omotosho also ordered that the differential amount between the monies and assets recovered from Mamman and the sum of N22 billion the prosecution was able to establish during the trial, out of the N33.8 billion allegedly siphoned from the Zungeru and Mambilla Hydro Electric Power projects, be refunded by the convict.
Mamman’s sentence not strange – SAN
In an interview with one of our correspondents last night, Ahmed Raji, SAN, described the former power minister’s sentence as not unusual. Raji explained that nobody knows Mamman’s lifespan, saying he might live up to 150 years.
He said, “This is not the first time a judgement pronouncement will be consecutively. The implication is that, instead of the sentencing to run concurrently, it will run consecutively.
“If he has sentences for different offences, it means when he finishes one, he will start the other. Nobody knows his lifespan; maybe he’s going to live for 150 years. You can jail somebody for six months, and by the time he spends one month, he dies. That’s all. That is the end of the matter. It is not strange; it is not unusual for the sentence to last long”.
How court cases mar Mambilla project
Initiated in 1973, the Mambilla project stalled following a contract awarded in 2003 by former President Olusegun Obasanjo, but was cancelled by late President Umaru Musa Yar’adua.
China EXIM promised 75 per cent funding after the cost rose from the initial cost of $2.1bn to $3.2bn, with CGGC and Sinohydro Corporation as the contractors.
The contract, under President Muhammadu Buhari, was finally awarded as a Joint Venture (JV) to Messrs CGGC/SINOHYDRO/CGCOC JV for $5.792 billion in 2017.
Details of the Certificate of No Objection issued by BPP indicate the federal government is getting a ‘Source of Funding’ of $5.495bn (about N2.0trn) from the China Export Import (EXIM) bank as a concessionary loan. This is about 85 per cent of the sum. The federal government is expected to provide the counterpart funding of 15 per cent.
Following the contract, Sunrise Power and Transmission Company Limited (SPTCL) had, on October 10, 2017, dragged the Nigerian government to the International Court of Arbitration administered by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) for the alleged breach of a 2003 agreement to construct the 3,050MW plant in Mambilla, Taraba State, on a “build, operate and transfer” basis for $6 billion.
The federal government insisted that the contract award was irregular and did not pass through due process. But Sunrise headed to court when a bid process for the civil works was announced by the government and a series of litigation stalled the project.
A former Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, in 2017, had described Sunrise Power as a middleman.
The minister had said the Buhari administration was directly contracting the Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) contractor, Sinohydro Corporation Limited, a Chinese firm, currently handling the project.
After several negotiations, Mamman had, in 2020, reportedly said the parties had reached an out-of-court settlement of $200 million.
The court battle took a new turn when Sunrise later filed a $400 million compensation claim at the ICC against the government for allegedly breaching the new agreement.
The company had said the sum was to serve as an out-of-court settlement, which the government allegedly failed to honour as it had agreed to pay in 14 days after it was signed by a former Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami and Mamman on behalf of the government and the Chairman/CEO of Sunrise Power, Leno Adesanya.
The company’s legal representative, Femi Falana, then filed a lawsuit at the International Court of Arbitration on May 11, demanding $400 million as overall claims, including penalties.
According to Sunrise in its claim document, the amount was to be paid “within 14 days” of the execution of the terms of the agreement on January 21, 2020, along with a 10 per cent penalty if there was a default in the settlement terms.
The company also said it was agreed that it would be restored as the local partner for the current $5.8 billion Mambilla power project.
A follow-up on this showed that the pact was revised and the local partner condition was removed. The federal government later requested a review of the negotiation, citing the COVID-19 pandemic effects on the Nigerian economy.
Recall that the EFCC had, in December 2023, charged Olu Agunloye, the then Minister of Power, with fraud and forgery over the Mambilla contract, accusing him of awarding the contract without FEC approval and costing the federal government over N65bn in loss.
Agunloye pleaded not guilty. He argued that he acted within his authority as minister and that the contract was validly approved by FEC. The trial is still ongoing at the Federal High Court in Abuja.
The EFCC also alleged that Agunloye’s actions created the legal foundation for Sunrise’s $2.3bn arbitration claim against Nigeria at the International Court of Arbitration in Paris, France.
Apart from Mamman and Agunloye, the project has led to a corruption case against Leno Adesanya, the promoter of Sunrise Power and Transmission Co. Ltd.
In February 2024, the EFCC had declared Adesanya wanted over fraud allegations in the $6 billion Mambilla hydropower contract.
The anti-graft agency said Adesanya is wanted “in an alleged case of conspiracy and corrupt offer to public officers”.
But Adesanya and Sunrise had in the suit marked FHC/ABJ/CS/267/2024 challenged the EFCC’s action.
Through their lawyer, M.S. Diri, the plaintiffs asked the court to determine the propriety of the commission’s powers to investigate the commercial transaction between them, the federal government and the ministry of power, considering that the case was already pending at the ICC International Court of Arbitration in Paris, France.
Delivering judgment, Inyang Ekwo, the presiding judge, held that since the Ministry of Power had contested the claims of the plaintiffs and had counterclaimed against them at the ICC International Court of Arbitration in Paris, the sanctity of the arbitral proceedings must be respected and protected.
The judge stressed that the Ministry of Power must not be seen as a territory where international commercial transactions are unsafe and where municipal laws and agencies can be used against investors in case of disputes.
Adesanya’s absence has stalled his trial by the anti-graft agency. The promoter of Sunrise has been away from Nigeria for over a decade due to alleged fear for his life and harassment by security agents.
Also, the EFCC re-arraigned Agunloye before Justice Jude Onwuegbuzie of the Federal High Court sitting in Apo, Abuja, in September 2025. He was accused in an amended seven-count charge over the alleged fraudulent award of the Mambilla Hydroelectric Power Project contract worth $6bn.
Agunloye pleaded not guilty to all counts.
N2bn budget for the project in 2020
Despite the court cases, the government in the 2020 budget allocated N2bn as counterpart funding for the project. The ministry had also pegged N600 million for four consultancy services.
Consultancy services to enumerate and evaluate the affected communities and persons will take N150m, consultancy for the land survey will take another N150m; the engineering design, while project management and supervision will cost N150m. A constituted federal government/ Taraba State Mambilla project implementation team will have N150m for their activities.
Ministry officials had then said the federal government, after the valuation, would pay the compensation claims.
As of 2019 when our correspondents visited the proposed project area on the Mambilla Plateau, they found that there was nothing on the ground to indicate the commencement of site clearance for the project. This was further corroborated by another investigation by Trust TV and the BBC in 2021. Recent findings revealed that the project remains stalled.
It was gathered that about 10,000 communities would be affected by the project in Sardauna Local Government Area of Taraba State, and were waiting for the payment of compensation for their land and for relocation to begin.
The residents, who are mostly farmers and pastoralists, said their land had been marked for the project, but no official had engaged them on the compensation plans.
Further checks showed that there was no presence of contractors from the Chinese firms in the joint venture at all the sites marked for the project spanning several kilometers along River Donga, River Turai and Mayo Rafi on the Mambilla Plateau.
The areas to be affected are mostly in Nguroje Constituency in the LGA, and part of the Agbon area in Kurmi LGA of the state.
The main project site at Baruf, where three Rivers: Donga, Turai and Rafin meet and form a big waterfall, is still fallow. There is no proper access road from the nearest Kakara community to Baruf, while the waterfall itself is in a thick forest, Daily Trust observed.
A resident of Baruf, Ismail Idiris Mbokaltiya, who worked with different consultants on the project between 2007 and September, 2019, had told Daily Trust that the entire area marked for the project had been surveyed.
He said the consultants and engineers, some Chinese, French and Nigerians, inspected the area in August 2019 up to Agbon in Kurmi LGA, where the turbines would be installed.
Mbokaltiya said residents of the affected communities were eager to see the project commence, but insisted that they must be compensated first.
Project suspended under Tinubu
Daily Trust reports that the project has been suspended since the start of the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration in May 2023 due to litigation over its ownership
Defending the suspension at the 2024 budget defence session organised by the Senate and House of Representatives Joint Committee on Power, the former Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, said funds were deliberately not allocated to the project since nothing could be achieved until the arbitration was settled.
He said, “For Mambilla, there is no provision for it in 2024. It isn’t a mistake. It is deliberate. It is under international arbitration. Until it is resolved, we can’t do anything about it.”