Today, May 17, the Nigerian social media has been buzzing over the wedding between Leona Adesanya and Asa Asika, popular music executive and Davido’s longtime manager. Many eyes are on the couple, Davido and other celebrities at the wedding, but the father of the bride, billionaire Leno Adesanya is barely mentioned. Yet, he’s perhaps the elephant in the room.
Mr. Adesanya, who is rarely in the public space, sits at the center of one of Nigeria’s most consequential legal battles in modern history. He’s an oil baron, international businessman, and now father-in-law to Nigerian pop culture royalty.
Leno Adesanya remains locked in a $2.3 billion arbitration suit against the Nigerian government in Paris, over a botched $6 billion contract tied to the Mambila Hydropower Project, originally signed in 2003.
The businessman who doesn’t blink at Presidents
Educated in the United States and a former Citibank executive, Adesanya returned to Nigeria in the late 1980s and built his fortune through Lutin Investments (Geneva) and Lenoil Holdings (Nigeria), both active in petroleum storage and offshore vessel equipment.
By 1993, his name was already tied to multiple lucrative contracts with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), awarded during General Ibrahim Babangida’s regime.
When Babangida’s tenure ended, NNPC attempted to revoke several of Leno Adesanya’s contracts, prompting Lutin Investments to sue at a French court.
In May 2007, a civil court in Paris awarded Adesanya $55.2 million in damages, plus compound interest dating back to July 7, 1993. The case dragged on through appeals and delays, with the final sum reportedly ballooning to over $277 million.
But that’s only the prelude.
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The man behind Mambila power saga
In 2003, during President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration, Leno Adesanya’s company, Sunrise Power and Transmission, signed a $6 billion Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) contract with the Nigerian government to develop the Mambila Hydropower Project – expected to generate 3,050 megawatts of electricity and become Africa’s largest hydroelectric plant.
But just days before Obasanjo left office in 2007, the contract was abruptly revoked and reassigned to China Gezhouba Group Corporation (CGGC) and China Geo-Engineering Corporation (CGC) at a reduced $1.46 billion.
Outraged, Leno Adesanya petitioned then-incoming President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, alleging the revocation was influenced by a $15 million bribe. By 2012, the Nigerian government reinstated Sunrise’s role via a formal agreement.
However, in 2017, under President Muhammadu Buhari, the federal government again awarded a new $5.8 billion contract – this time to Sinohydro Consortium, excluding Sunrise. The Chinese EXIM Bank, slated to fund the deal, pulled back citing unresolved disputes. Sunrise sued.
He’s demanding $2.3 billion from Nigeria
In 2020, Sunrise agreed to drop its claims if paid $200 million within six months – failing which an additional $200 million and interest would be owed.
The Nigerian government failed to meet the deadline. Adesanya responded by reopening the arbitration proceedings in Paris, demanding $2.3 billion in damages for breach of contract.
In a plot twist, former President Obasanjo, former President Buhari, and ex-Minister of Power Babatunde Fashola are all testifying in Paris to defend the government’s side.
Obasanjo, in particular, insists he never formally approved the Sunrise contract, calling it “fraudulent”, a stance that opened the door for Nigeria’s EFCC to file fraud charges against former Power Minister Olu Agunloye in 2023.
Adesanya himself was declared wanted by the EFCC, accused of bribing Agunloye with ₦3.6 million in 2019, a claim he vehemently denies, insisting the payment was for medical expenses and irrelevant to the contract, which had been approved 16 years earlier.
The billionaire who prefers the shadows
Through it all, Leno Adesanya remains elusive. He resides between Dubai and the U.S., claiming he fled Nigeria after surviving an assassination attempt.
He rarely grants interviews, doesn’t mingle at elite social events, and despite being named in the Pandora Papers for facilitating offshore transactions for ex-NSA Sambo Dasuki, he has never publicly responded to any of the allegations.
From deliberate privacy to pop culture ties
With Leno Adesanya’s daughter now married into music royalty, is this the beginning of a new chapter for the hitherto private Adesanya family?
Time will tell.
