The Supreme Court has upheld the five-year jail term imposed on Farouk Lawan, a former member of the House of Representatives, affirming the judgment of the Court of Appeal. Lawan was convicted and sentenced in 2021 for accepting a $500,000 bribe from Femi Otedola, Chairman of Zenon Petroleum and Gas Ltd.<\/p>\n
In a unanimous decision on Friday, a five-member panel of the Supreme Court agreed with the 2022 judgment of the Court of Appeal, which had affirmed Lawan\u2019s five-year sentence on count three of the three counts brought against him at the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).<\/p>\n
Justice John Okoro, who prepared the lead judgment, had it delivered by Justice Tijjani Abubakar. The apex court found Lawan\u2019s appeal to be without merit and dismissed it accordingly.<\/p>\n
A Federal Capital Territory High Court had sentenced Lawan to seven years imprisonment for receiving a $500,000 bribe while serving as the chairman of the House\u2019s ad-hoc committee investigating the fuel subsidy fraud in 2012.<\/p>\n
The trial judge, Angela Otaluka, held that Lawan demanded $3m and received $500,000 from Femi Otedola in 2012 to remove Otedola\u2019s oil company, Zenon Oil and Gas, from the list of firms indicted for fraud in the fuel subsidy regime.<\/p>\n
She also held that Lawan was guilty of all three counts of corruption and bribery<\/p>\n
Not satisfied, Lawan approached the appellate court where his jail term was reduced from seven to five years.<\/p>\n
Lawan is at the apex court urging the court to set aside the judgments of the lower court.<\/p>\n
The Supreme Court has upheld the five-year jail term imposed on Farouk Lawan, a former member of the House of Representatives, affirming the judgment of the Court of Appeal. Lawan was convicted and sentenced in 2021 for accepting a $500,000 bribe from Femi Otedola, Chairman of Zenon Petroleum and Gas Ltd. In a unanimous decision […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":16787,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[181],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crime"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16786"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16788,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16786\/revisions\/16788"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}