Bribe: You Must Serve Jail Term — Supreme Court Rules On Ex-Lawmaker, Farouk Lawan
BY OUR CORRESPONDENT – After years of legal battles to save his face from public odium, the Supreme Court on Thursday affirmed that the former Chairman of the then House of Representatives Ad-hoc Committee on Fuel Subsidy probe, Farouk Lawan must serve the five-year conviction over the bribery charges preferred against him by the Federal Government.
In a lead judgment read by Justice Tijani Abubakar on Friday, the apex Court panel dismissed Lawan’s appeal against the judgment of the Court of Appeal in Abuja, which had in February 2022 reduced the jail term imposed by a high court from seven to five years.
Lawan, who has been in prison custody since June 2021, had among other things, contended that he was not allowed to make a plea of allocutus (plea for leniency) by the trial court before it jailed him.
However, in its lead judgment that was prepared by Justice Inyang Okoro but read on Friday by Justice Tijjani Abubakar, the Supreme Court said it was “crystal clear that failure of the trial court to call for allocution did not vitiate the sentence passed on the Appellant.”
Upholding the conviction and sentencing of the ex-lawmaker to five years in prison for bribery, the apex Court, in a unanimous decision by a five-member panel, dismissed as lacking in merit an appeal filed to challenge his conviction.
The former legislator was arraigned in 2013 after he allegedly demanded a bribe of $3 million from billionaire businessman, Femi Otedola, who accused him of receiving an initial sum of $500,000 to help influence the removal of his oil company’s name from the list of indicted companies in the 2012 fuel subsidy scam.
In June 2021, a High Court of the Federal Capital Territory sitting at Apo sentenced the former lawmaker to seven years in prison on the three count charges preferred against him with a sentence of five years each for the first two counts, and seven years for the last count, all to run concurrently.
According to the trial Justice Angela Otaluka, the four-term lawmaker, then representing Bagwai/Shanono Federal Constituency of Kano State, was guilty of demanding an aggregate sum of $3 million from Chairman of Zenon Petroleum and Gas Ltd, Chief Femi Otedola, to give his company a clean bill of health in the fuel subsidy probe the House of Reps initiated on 2012.
The Court further held that the Defendant acted in breach of section 17 (1) (a), section 8(1) (a) (b) (ii), and section 23 (i) of the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act, 2000, and committed an offence punishable under section 8 (1) 17 (1) and 23(3) of the same Act.
Expressing satisfaction that the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) had successfully established a criminal case against Lawan, the Court convicted him on all the three count charges that were preferred against him.
Not satisfied with the ruling, Lawan, lodged six grounds of appeal to challenge his conviction, maintaining that the ICPC failed to, by way of credible evidence, establish a prima facie criminal case against him.
Accordingly, Lawan prayed the appellate court to discharge and acquit him of the bribery allegation. In its judgment on February 24, 2022, a three-man panel of Justices of the Court of Appeal, Abuja Division, affirmed the High Court’s ruling but unanimously reduced his jail term from seven (7) to five (5) years.
Despite discharging and acquitting him of two of the charges that led to his conviction, the panel, led by the Court of Appeal President, Justice Monica Dongban-Mensem, held that the totality of evidence the prosecution adduced in the matter was not sufficient to prove that the former lawmaker demanded and agreed to accept $3m from Otedola.
Dismissing the first two counts in the charge, the appellate court sustained the last count in the Prosecution’s case that Lawan indeed received $500, 000 from the oil mogul, an offence which attracts a maximum of five years imprisonment upon conviction.
