Jan 26, 2025
The Supreme Court has affirmed a five-year jail term for a former House of Representatives’ member, Farouk Lawan, for receiving a $500,000 bribe in 2012 during a legislative probe into the fuel subsidy regime.
Upholding the former lawmaker’s conviction, on Friday, the five-member panel of the court in its unanimous judgement, dismissed Farouk’s appeal challenging the decision of the Court of Appeal which had also affirmed his conviction by the trial court.
In the lead judgement prepared by John Okoro but read by Tijjani Abubakar on Friday, the Supreme Court held that Mr Lawan’s appeal lacked merit.
The Court of Appeal, in February 2022, narrowly affirmed Mr Lawan’s conviction after exonerating him of two out of the three counts he was earlier jailed for by the trial court,
As a result of the partial acquittal, the Court of Appeal reduced the seven years of jail time imposed on him by the trial court in February 2021 to five years.
Friday’s judgement of the Supreme Court, being the final stage of appeal, sealed the fate of Farouk Lawan, a four-time member of the House of Representatives, as a convict.
He is now in his third of the five years he is to serve in jail, starting from June 2021 when he was sentenced by the trial court
In June 2021, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) High Court in Abuja, convicted Farouk to seven years’ imprisonment for receiving a N500,000 bribe while serving as the chairman of the House’s ad hoc committee investigating the fraud around fuel subsidy in 2012.
The trial judge, Angela Otaluka, found Mr Lawan guilty of all three counts of corruption and bribery.
Otaluka, while delivering judgment in the case, said Farouk Lawan demanded N3 million and received $500,000 from Femi Otedola, a Nigerian oil mogul in 2012.
He took the bribe to remove Mr Otedola’s oil company, Zenon Oil and Gas, from the list of firms indicted for fraud in the fuel subsidy regime, the judge ruled.
“The prosecution has proved beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant (Mr Lawan) demanded and received the sum of $500,000 from Mr Femi Otedola in order to exonerate his oil firm from an investigation by the House of Representatives ad-hoc committee on fuel subsidy probe.
Appeal Court decision
Mr Lawan appealed against the trial court’s decision at the Court of Appeal, which ended up exonerating him of two out of the three counts he was convicted of by the trial court.
Dismissing the first two counts, a three-member bench of the Court of Appeal led by the court’s president, Monica Dongban-Mensem, unanimously ruled that the prosecution failed to prove that Mr Lawan demanded and agreed to accept a $3 million bribe from Mr Otedola to exonerate the businessman’s company from the list of firms indicted for fuel subsidy fraud in 2012.
The decision capitalised on a major investigative flaw in the case, with the court holding that the prosecution failed to establish whether it was Mr Otedola who offered the bribe or it was Mr Lawan who asked for it.
