Last weekend, Asa Asika, the nephew of Obi Asika music executive and director general of National Council for Arts and Culture, NCAC, as well as a cou
Last weekend, Asa Asika, the nephew of Obi Asika music executive and director general of National Council for Arts and Culture, NCAC, as well as a cousin to former rapper, Naetochukwu Chikwe aka Naeto C, tied the knot in a lavish traditional wedding ceremony to his lover Leona Adesanya. Asa is also more popularly known as the manager to super star singer, David Adeleke.
However not many know who his bride Leona is as quite unlike others from privileged (earned or otherwise) background, Leona isn’t loud and likes to keep things quiet.
Leona’s father is none other than businessman, Laitan Leno Adesanya who has been in the news in recent times over the revocation of a $6 billion electricity project in Mambila, Northeast Nigeria allocated to his company, Sunrise Power and Transmission Company by the federal government. So high profile is the revocation of the business that two former Nigerian presidents; Olusegun Obasanjo and Muhammadu Buhari and an ex-power minister, Babatunde Fashola, were in Paris a few months ago to testify in an arbitration case instituted by Nigerian businessman.
So who really is Adesanya?
Like many wealthy Nigerians, Adesanya’s wealth is traced to several oil and gas contracts approved by the military government. Educated in the United States, Adesanya also worked for Citibank stateside before returning to Nigeria during the military regime of General Ibrahim Babangida.
Adesanya’s biggest companies are Lutin Investments in Geneva, and its Nigerian arm, Lenoil Holdings, established in 1988. His companies supplied ocean vessels with equipment for the storage of petroleum products and engaged in other oil activities. Adesanya owns 50% of Lutin and is the CEO. His wife, Noimot Ibironke, and his children also own stakes in his companies.
During Babangida’s regime, Lutin Investments and Lenoil were awarded many lucrative contracts from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Nigeria’s national oil firm. This sparked rumours in the media that then-president Babangida’s influential wife, Mariam, was one of the owners of Lenoil.
After Babangida’s regime came to an abrupt end, the new power brokers sought to revoke existing agreements his companies had with NNPC. In 1993, Lutin Investments dragged NNPC before international arbitration.
In May 2007, the arbitrator, France’s civil court Tribunal de Grande Instance, awarded Lutin damages against NNPC for $55.2m, plus 10% compound interest; £20,480, plus 10% compound interest; and N4,692,930, plus 21% compound interest. All interest obligations began to accrue on 7 July 1993, court documents state.
The NNPC petitioned the Paris Court of Appeal, which upheld the original verdict. However, the national oil firm delayed obeying the judgment and the sum rose to about $277 million due to accruing interest.
By the mid-2010s, Adesanya was swimming in debt, owing Sterling Bank some $2.3 million. After putting pressure on the NNPC to pay him, then-president Goodluck Jonathan eventually approved the payment of $55.2 million, leading to another round of disputes.
With his newly registered Sunrise Transmission Company set up in the early 2000s, Adesanya invested in the electricity power sector, starting as a middleman. He enjoyed unfettered access to the Presidential Villa during the early years of the Obasanjo administration but soon fell out of favour with the former president for reasons unknown.
However, after Obasanjo’s exit, Adesanya was favoured by Jonathan, who held office from 2010 to 2015. After Jonathan’s exit, Adesanya was arrested by Nigerian authorities for paying $1.85 million into a bank account allegedly on the instruction of erstwhile oil minister Diezani Alison-Madueke. Investigators claim the money was part of a $115 million slush fund used to bribe electoral officials in 2015.
Adesanya’s name also features in the Pandora Papers published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists which stated that Adesanya set up a shell company for powerful National Security Adviser Sambo Dasuki, who was accused of diverting $2.1bn meant for arms.
Now Adesanya is engaged in yet another dispute with the federal government. This time it is regarding the $6 billion Mambila Hydropower project.
The project was first conceived in 1982 and was supposed to bring succour to millions of Nigerians who have for decades grappled with an inconsistent power supply. But it wasn’t until 2003 during the administration of Obasanjo that Nigeria approved the $6 billion contract to Sunrise and a consortium of Chinese companies to construct what was to be Africa’s largest hydroelectric power plant.
The project, upon completion, was expected to boost the country’s power generation capacity by 3,050MW. The entire cost of the project was to be borne by Sunrise and its partners which would then transfer ownership to the Nigerian government after the agreed period.
However, just days before Obasanjo left office, the contract was revoked and awarded to China Gezhouba Group Corporation/China Geo-Engineering Corporation (CGGC/CGC) at the modified cost of $1.46 billion as the project was scaled down.
Sunrise, which felt aggrieved, wrote a petition to then-president Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, accusing some officials of the Obasanjo administration of revoking the contract after the new contractors had paid a bribe of $15 million. Yar’Adua subsequently reinstated Sunrise’s contract.
In 2012, the Nigerian government followed up by signing an agreement with Sunrise authorising the firm and its Chinese partners to proceed with the project. However, in 2017, the Muhammadu Buhari administration signed a separate $5.8 billion contract with another Chinese grouping, Sinohydro Consortium. However, the Chinese EXIM bank refused to fund the project due to the legal tussles.
Sunrise took legal action against the federal government and Sinohydro Consortium, demanding $2.3 billion as compensation. Buhari held talks with Sunrise boss Adesanya and Chinese officials on the way forward.
Leno Adesanya
In 2020, it was agreed that Nigeria would pay Sunrise $200m to drop all its claims to Mambilla – but an additional $200 million and interest would be paid if the Nigerian government failed to pay within six months.
Nigeria failed to pay up, citing dwindling revenues. This forced Sunrise to return to arbitration, but federal government had other plans.
At the time, Obasanjo said he never approved the contract in the first place and that it was thus fraudulent from the beginning. This gave Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) the impetus to arraign former power minister Olu Agunloye for contract fraud. Agunloye denies the allegations.
The EFCC also declared Adesanya a wanted man, accusing him of giving kickbacks to Agunloye. The EFCC said Sunrise paid N3.6 million into Agunloye’s bank account in 2019. Adesanya dismissed the bribe allegations, insisting that the money was paid 16 years after the contract was approved and was given to Agunloye as payment for health costs.
At the time he was declared wanted, Adesanya was also accused of attempting to bribe a former Minister of Water Resources, Suleiman Adamu, in the lead-up to the settlement meeting between Sunrise and Nigeria in London on 9 November 2019 by offering him money and women and sought to bribe a former Attorney General of Nigeria and Abubakar Malami, also with money and women, in order to take decisions favourable to Sunrise and influence Nigeria’s defence in this Arbitration.
Nigeria argued in the document that Adesanya is a man who fully understands how to game and take advantage of the weaknesses in the institutions of the Nigerian government.
But Adesanya accused the federal government of a witch-hunt and attempting to discredit the transaction to prejudice the current arbitration in Paris.
