Former House of Representative member Farouk Lawan will be jailed for five years after the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the verdict of a lower court that found him guilty of bribery and corruption.
The Abuja high court had sentenced Lawan to a seven years jail term, but he made an appeal to the Abuja Division of the Court of Appeal in February 2022, which affirmed the verdict but reduced the sentence to five years. Farouk Lawan then approached the Supreme Court to quash the sentence.
In its ruling Friday the Supreme Court in its lead judgment read by Justice Tijani Abubakar dismissed Mr Lawan’s appeal against the judgement. He was arraigned in 2013 for demanding a $3 million bribe from billionaire businessman, Femi Otedola, who accused him of collecting $500,000.
Mr Lawal, the then chairman of the House of Representatives Ad hoc Committee on Fuel Subsidy Regime.
The bribe was believed to have helped influence the removal of the name of Mr Otedola’s oil firms from the list of indicted companies in the 2012 fuel subsidy scam.
