A former House of Representatives member, Farouk Lawan, has been released after completing a five-year prison sentence for soliciting and accepting a bribe of $500,000.
He represented Bagwai/Shanono federal Constituency of Kano state in the green chamber from 1999 to 2015.
He was convicted for attempting to extort a $3 million bribe from Femi Otedola, a billionaire oil tycoon from Nigeria, during his time as the chairman of the House of Representatives ad-hoc committee that was probing fuel subsidy fraud in 2012.
In 2012, Lawan chaired the House of Representatives committee that investigated the Nigerian government’s fuel subsidies. The committee was set up in the wake of nationwide strikes in Nigeria after former President Goodluck Jonathan removed fuel subsidy.
Lawan’s committee said in its report that it discovered a lot of fraudulent activities. It said a whooping $6.8million was paid for petroleum products subsidy that were never delivered. Lawan, got enmeshed in bribery scandal in the course of its investigation of companies indicted in the fuel subsidy scandal. In a meeting with billionaire oil magnate Femi Otedola,
He was seen on tape receiving $500,000 in order to cancel the former’s name from the report before presenting the report to the House. While the bribery scandal did not only dent his anti-corruption stance, it also affected his chance of returning to the green chamber in 2015.
In the course of the trial, Otedola had insisted that the operation (to give bribe to Lawan) was done with the full knowledge of the DSS in the bid to “catch a corrupt politician in the act”.
While Lawan admitted to receiving the amount, he however insisted it was meant to expose the businessman, and to convince the House of the pressure its committee investigating fuel subsidy fraud, faced.
For 8 years, Lawan was a regular visitor in courtrooms to prove his ‘innocence’ of the allegations leveled against him. However, the trial judge, Justice Angella Otaluka convicted Lawan on three-count charge.
