By Amah Alphonsus Amaonye, Director General, African Writers Centre, AWC.
Nigeria has secured a major legal victory in the long-running dispute surrounding the Mambilla Hydroelectric Power Project, after an International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) arbitration tribunal sitting in Paris ruled in favour of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
The award, issued on Thursday, September 17, 2026, rejected claims brought by Sunrise Power and Transmission Company Limited in connection with the controversial Mambilla project in Taraba State.
The development is particularly significant because it came while President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is in France as part of his three-week European leave, which the Presidency had described as a working vacation. Tinubu moved to Paris after spending the first part of his leave in London.
According to the President’s statement, Sunrise had demanded $680 million as a settlement sum and interest in one arbitration, while a separate arbitration connected to the Mambilla project involves a claim of more than $2.7 billion in compensation and interest. Reports put the combined potential exposure at approximately $3.38 billion.
The ICC ruling therefore removes a substantial financial and legal cloud that has hung over the long-delayed Mambilla project for years.
President Tinubu described the decision as clearing the “single biggest legal hurdle” that had paralysed the project, while commending Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice Prince Lateef Fagbemi, the Federal Ministry of Justice and Nigeria’s international defence team led by Elizabeth Oger-Gross and Tolu Obamuroh of Paul Hastings LLP.
The President also acknowledged the testimony of former President Olusegun Obasanjo and the late former President Muhammadu Buhari, as well as former ministers Babatunde Fashola and Suleiman Adamu and other witnesses and experts who participated in the proceedings.
Further details reported on the award indicate that the tribunal dismissed Sunrise’s claim that Nigeria breached its obligations under the disputed settlement agreement and addendum. It also rejected a further $400 million claim arising from the settlement arrangement and ordered Sunrise and its promoter to reimburse Nigeria about $11.8 million in legal fees and expenses.
For Nigeria, the significance goes beyond the immediate financial claims.
The Mambilla Hydroelectric Power Project is designed as a major electricity-generation project in Taraba State. The project has been entangled in contractual disputes and arbitration for years, making the latest ICC decision potentially important to the legal environment surrounding its future development.
It is therefore reasonable to identify the ICC ruling as one of the major developments associated with President Tinubu’s current stay in France—not because the President personally determined the outcome of the arbitration, but because the decision was delivered in Paris during his working vacation and addresses one of the major legal disputes affecting a strategically important Nigerian infrastructure project.
The next test will be what follows the legal victory: whether the Federal Government can translate the removal of this major legal obstacle into concrete progress toward resolving the remaining financing, contractual, technical and implementation issues surrounding Mambilla.
For a country facing a persistent electricity deficit, the ultimate significance of the ICC ruling will be measured not only in billions of dollars in claims avoided, but also in whether the legal breakthrough helps move the long-delayed hydropower project closer to implementation.
Nigeria has won the arbitration battle. The bigger question now is whether Mambilla can finally move from years of litigation and controversy to actual power generation.
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