Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
The spokesman of the forfeiture in chief of the Nigerian Presidency has gone shopping in Paris. He is looking for someone, anyone, to stand beside his principal so that the stain will look less lonely. He came back with a word he did not find there: indictment.
Mr Bayo Onanuga, there was no indictment in Paris. There could not have been one. And the man you call evasive answered you the same day, in writing, point by point.
THE WORD THAT WAS NEVER SPOKEN IN PARIS
The International Chamber of Commerce is not the International Criminal Court. It is a commercial arbitration body. The case in question was Sunrise Power and its promoter, Leno Adesanya, against the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Atiku Abubakar was not a party to it. He was not charged, not tried and not convicted. An arbitral tribunal has no power to indict anyone, and certainly not a man who was never before it.
Read the sentence you quoted. It speaks of a “close connection in time.” It describes the contract award itself as “alleged.” A tribunal that says it cannot rule out a link has told you, in its own careful language, that it has established none. Timing is not guilt. “Bribe” is your word, Mr Onanuga. It is not the tribunal’s.
A calendar is not a charge sheet, and a coincidence of dates is not a conviction.
WHO SIGNED, AND WHO STANDS IN THE DOCK
Let us go to the only criminal trial the Mambilla contract has produced. It is not in Paris. It is at the FCT High Court in Apo, Abuja. The EFCC under your own principal is the prosecutor. The defendant is Dr Olu Agunloye, alone, on seven counts.
The EFCC’s own investigator told that court that the minister awarded the contract on 22 May 2003. The gratification alleged in the charge is N5.6 million said to have gone to the minister. Atiku’s name is not on that charge sheet. He did not sit on the procurement panel, and he did not award the contract.
Your government controls the EFCC, the Attorney General and every file in Abuja. If you truly believed Atiku signed that contract and pocketed a bribe, you would not be issuing press releases. You would be filing charges. You have chosen the press release because a press release needs no evidence.
THE WITNESS WHO REFUSED TO BE USED
The Presidency and its campaign council have one more complaint. Obasanjo and Buhari went to Paris to defend Nigeria, they say, and Atiku stayed away.
Let us settle it with the testimony of the man who brought the case.
Leno Adesanya, promoter of Sunrise, told the tribunal that he tried to get Atiku to give evidence. Atiku declined. By Adesanya’s own account, the reason was that Atiku would not be drawn into a dispute involving former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
Read that twice, Mr Onanuga. The only person on record seeking Atiku’s testimony was the claimant suing the Federal Republic of Nigeria for billions of dollars. To answer that call, Atiku would have had to stand on the side of a company demanding money from the Nigerian treasury. He would also have had to stand against the man he served for eight years. He refused both. You call that evasion. Nigerians will call it patriotism, and loyalty that survived even Obasanjo’s years of public insults.
The only man who asked Atiku to testify was the man suing Nigeria. Atiku said no.
Obasanjo has spent two decades throwing darts at his former deputy. Here was the chance to repay him in a foreign courtroom, with the world watching. Atiku would not take it. A man hungry for revenge would have gone to Paris. A man who puts Nigeria first stayed home.
As for the claim that he dodged a summons, there was no summons to dodge. The award, as reported, does not show that the tribunal summoned him, ordered him to testify, or found that he disobeyed any directive. He was never subpoenaed. You cannot run from an invitation that was never sent.
The tribunal dismissed Sunrise’s claims. It imposed no liability, no damages and no costs on Atiku. He has asked the APC to publish the paragraph of the award that says otherwise. Mr Onanuga, the challenge is open. Produce the paragraph.
THE SETTLEMENT THEY HOPE YOU FORGOT
Onanuga wants Nigerians to shudder at the $3.38 billion that “Atiku’s allies” nearly took from the treasury. So let us ask who brought the treasury closest to paying Sunrise.
In 2020, under the APC government of President Buhari, Nigeria signed a settlement agreement to pay Sunrise $200 million. When that money was not paid, Sunrise went back to arbitration demanding $400 million. The only Nigerian government that ever put its signature to paying Sunrise was an APC government. Before you lecture Nigerians about who endangered the public purse over Mambilla, consult your own party’s files.
THE MINISTER WHO DEBUNKED HIMSELF
Onanuga says the Power Minister, Joseph Tegbe, has “debunked” Atiku’s warning about electricity subsidy. Tegbe did not debunk it. Tegbe announced it.
At a media session in Lagos, the minister told Nigerians that the Federal Government will phase out subsidy payments in the power sector from 2027. Atiku repeated what your minister said, and you call it a lie. If that is a lie, sack the minister who told it first.
A candidate who uses a world press conference to talk about the price of petrol and the cost of light is talking about the two things squeezing 200 million people. That is not diversion. It is the campaign. You are angry because the conversation is about your failures.
THE ONLY FORFEITURE IN THIS QUARREL
Onanuga calls Atiku the “diverter in chief.” Look at the man he serves.
In 1993, in the Northern District of Illinois, $460,000 in accounts linked to Bola Ahmed Tinubu was forfeited to the United States. US prosecutors traced that money to heroin trafficking proceeds. It was a civil forfeiture, and it concluded with the money gone.
In this whole quarrel, that is the only record of an actual court taking an actual sum of money. It belongs to the principal, not the challenger.
As for Atiku, he has lived under hostile administrations for twenty years. That includes the government of the man who now testifies against him, the eight years of Buhari, and the present government with its EFCC and its National Security Adviser. None of them has produced a single conviction. Atiku’s standing answer has never changed: whoever has a case, bring it.
One man says come and look. The other man’s spokesman writes another press release.
SO MUCH FIRE FOR ONE MAN
Count the salvos of a single Friday. There was the Presidency, then the Presidential Campaign Council, then a column. The same $3.38 billion appeared in each, and the same quote from Paris. So many pens, one script.
Nigerians have noticed. A government confident of re-election does not spend a whole day on one opponent. It does not need its spokesmen and campaign council repeating identical press releases before breakfast. You attack Atiku this often because you fear him this much.
Here is free counsel from Ekiti. Rather than this innuendo, start packing your loads. The removal vans do not ask for press statements.
THE CANDY AND THE HUNGRY MAN
The Presidency has exposed its spokesman. Onanuga in power is like a hungry man who has at last been handed a piece of candy. Everyone can hear him sucking it. Every time Atiku’s name is spoken, he clutches his mouth in terror that someone has come to take the candy away. That terror writes his press releases now. It is not principle that writes them.
It was not always so. There was an Onanuga of the guerrilla press years who hid from soldiers to publish against a dictatorship. Had power never come near him, history would have filed Bayo Onanuga forever among the men of principle. Power came, and the file had to be reopened.
Mr Onanuga, the tribunal in Paris ruled for Nigeria, and every Nigerian welcomes that. But it indicted no one and summoned no one. There is no indictment and no summons for you to hide behind. There is only 16 January 2027, when the suffering people of this country will deliver their own verdict. They will not need a translator from Paris to read it.
121 days to go.
AtikuIsComing #ADC2027 #NoIndictmentInParis #TheNarrativeForce
Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
Director General,
The Narrative Force
thenarrativeforce.org
18 September 2026
