{"id":17552,"date":"2024-01-26T11:30:09","date_gmt":"2024-01-26T11:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/?p=17552"},"modified":"2024-01-26T11:30:09","modified_gmt":"2024-01-26T11:30:09","slug":"supreme-court-upholds-farouk-lawans-5-year-sentence-in-500000-bribery-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/?p=17552","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court Upholds Farouk Lawan\u2019s 5-Year Sentence In $500,000 Bribery Case"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">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.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Lawan was convicted and sentenced in 2021 for accepting a $500,000 bribe from Femi Otedola, Chairman of Zenon Petroleum and Gas Ltd.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">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).<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">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.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">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.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">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.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">She also held that Lawan was guilty of all three counts of corruption and bribery.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Not satisfied, Lawan approached the appellate court where his jail term was reduced from seven to five years.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Lawan is at the apex court urging the court to set aside the judgments of the lower court.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Reading the lead judgment, Justice Tijjani Abubakar upheld the decision of the appeal court and dismissed the appeal.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17553,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8395,8396,8393,8394,1129],"class_list":["post-17552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-8395","tag-000-bribery-case","tag-farouk-lawan","tag-sentence","tag-supreme-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17552"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17552"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17554,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17552\/revisions\/17554"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}