THE SUPREME Court on Friday The Supreme Court, on Friday, affirmed five years imprisonment for former House of Representatives member, Farouk Lawan, who was convicted of receiving a $500,000 bribe in 2012 during a legislative probe into the fraudulent fuel subsidy regime in Nigeria.
In a judgement prepared by Justice John Okoro but read by Justice Tijjani Abubakar, the Supreme Court dismissed Lawan’s appeal as lacking merit.
The Court of Appeal had in February 2022 affirmed Lawan’s conviction but exonerated him of two out of the three counts he was earlier jailed for by the FCT High Court, therefore reducing the seven years of jail term to five.
Lawal is now in his third of the five years which began in June 2021 when he was sentenced by the trial judge, Justice Angela Otaluka, of the FCT High Court who found him guilty of the three-count charge of corruption and bribery.
Delivering judgment in the case, Justice Otaluka said Lawan demanded N3 million and received $500,000 from oil billionaire, Femi Otedola, in 2012 with a promise to remove Otedola’s oil company, Zenon Oil and Gas, from the list of firms indicted for fraud in the fuel subsidy regime.
“The prosecution has proved beyond reasonable doubt that… 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.
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Although Lawan appealed against the decision at the Court of Appeal, which eventually exonerated him of two out of the three counts he was convicted.
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 Lawan demanded and agreed to accept a $3 million bribe from Otedola to exonerate his 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 Otedola who offered the bribe or it was Lawan who asked for it.
David Igbodo, the police investigative officer, who testified as the second prosecution witness (PW2), “was evasive” at the trial court on the issue of the telephone conversations the two men had on the bribery, Justice Dongban-Mensem held in her judgement.
She said the prosecution could have obtained the call logs of both men to determine who initiated the bribery conversation, but they failed to do so.
“The respondent did not find it necessary to contact the service providers to establish that the appellant demanded $3 million from PW5 (Mr Otedola),” Justice Dongban-Mensem said, further stating that Otedola’s claim that Lawan asked for the bribe was not corroborated by any evidence.
“There is no scintilla of evidence from PW2 (Mr Igbodo) establishing or proving that the appellant (Lawan) corruptly asked for $3 million from PW5 (Otedola). There is also no evidence that the appellant agreed to accept $ 3 million from PW5 to remove Zenon Oil and Gas Limited and AP Petroleum from the list of indicted firms,” the judge held.
Dismissing the two charges, she held: “There is a very big lacuna in Counts 1 and 2”.
“There is no compelling evidence against the appellant in Counts 1 and 2,” she added.
But the panel affirmed the decision of the lower court that Lawan, indeed, accepted a $500,000 bribe from Otedola, an offence that attracted five years’ imprisonment at the lower court.
Justice Dongban-Mensem held that Lawan’s claim that he collected the $500,000 as evidence of bribery against Otedola did not hold water, noting that from the trial court’s records, Lawan had admitted not reporting the money he received from Otedola to any law enforcement agency.
“It is curious that he accepted the $500,000 as evidence of bribe but failed to report it to any law enforcement agency,” she held.
Justice Dongban-Mensem also referred to the testimony of one of Lawan’s contemporaries at the House of Representatives, Adams Jagaba, who testified as the fourth prosecution witness (PW4) to the detriment of the convict’s line of defence.
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Jagaba said it was untrue that Lawan submitted the money to him as an exhibit with a cover letter. “No such money or memo was given to PW4,” the court held.
Affirming Lawan’s conviction and sentence of five years imprisonment on the charge of taking a $500,000 bribe from Otedola, the court held that the prosecution proved it “beyond reasonable doubt”.
The Court of Appeal affirmed both the conviction and the sentence passed by the lower court on the offence. But it discharged and acquitted him regarding the two other counts of demanding and agreeing to accept $3 million from Otedola to clear his company.
