Farouk Lawan, a former member of the House of Representatives, has been released after serving a five-year sentence for requesting and receiving a $500,000 bribe.
The Supreme Court upheld Lawan’s conviction on January 26, 2024.
He was convicted of soliciting a $3 million bribe from Femi Otedola, a Nigerian billionaire oil mogul, while serving as chairman of the House of Representatives’ ad hoc committee investigating gasoline subsidy fraud in 2012.
The Supreme Court upheld the conviction and sentence of Lawan, former Chairman of the House of Representatives Ad-hoc Committee on Fuel Subsidy Probe, to five years in prison for bribery.
In a unanimous decision by a five-member panel on January 26, 2024, the Supreme Court denied the former lawmaker’s petition to dispute his conviction, ruling it to be without merit.
Lawan had argued, among other reasons, that the trial court denied him the right to make a plea of allocutus (a plea for leniency) before jailing him.
However, in its lead judgement, which was draughted by Justice Inyang Okoro but read on Friday by Justice Tijjani Abubakar, the Supreme Court stated that it was “crystal clear that the failure of the trial court to call for allocution did not vitiate the sentence passed on the appellant.”
Remember that on June 22, 2021, a High Court of the Federal Capital Territory sitting in Apo sentenced the former legislator to seven years in jail.
Trial Justice Angela Otaluka found the four-term lawmaker for Kano State’s Bagwai/Shanono Federal Constituency guilty of demanding an aggregate sum of $3 million from Zenon Petroleum and Gas Ltd. Chairman, Chief Femi Otedola, to give his company a clean bill of health in the House of Representatives’ fuel subsidy probe, which began in 2012.
