{"id":5438,"date":"2024-01-26T11:21:27","date_gmt":"2024-01-26T11:21:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/?p=5438"},"modified":"2024-01-26T11:21:27","modified_gmt":"2024-01-26T11:21:27","slug":"supreme-court-upholds-farouk-lawans-5-year-sentence-in-500000-bribery-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/2024\/01\/26\/supreme-court-upholds-farouk-lawans-5-year-sentence-in-500000-bribery-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court Upholds Farouk Lawan\u2019s 5-Year Sentence In $500,000 Bribery Case"},"content":{"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<p>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<p>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<p>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.<iframe loading=\"lazy\" id=\"nsn-iframe-3c690e60-e449-46aa-bfe3-57a08a0632cb\" title=\"ia-container-iframe\" src=\"https:\/\/c.nsmedia-advertising.com\/betano-ng\/NG?l=3c690e60-e449-46aa-bfe3-57a08a0632cb&amp;token=8b94ddac-94c7-4cfd-a85a-d85299998cd1&amp;country=NG&amp;region=LA&amp;ref=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8=&amp;path=aHR0cHM6Ly9sZWFkZXJzaGlwLm5nL2JyZWFraW5nLXN1cHJlbWUtY291cnQtdXBob2xkcy1mYXJvdWstbGF3YW5zLTUteWVhci1zZW50ZW5jZS1pbi01MDAwMDAtYnJpYmVyeS1jYXNlLw==&amp;url=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYmV0YW5vLm5nLz9idGFnPWFfMjU4OTNiXzI2MTZjXyZ1dG1fbWVkaXVtPTc4MzImdXRtX3NvdXJjZT0xJnNpdGVpZD0yNTg5Mw==\" width=\"1px\" height=\"1px\" frameborder=\"0\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>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<p>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<p>She also held that Lawan was guilty of all three counts of corruption and bribery.<\/p>\n<p>Not satisfied, Lawan approached the appellate court where his jail term was reduced from seven to five years.<\/p>\n<p>Lawan is at the apex court urging the court to set aside the judgments of the lower court.<\/p>\n<p>Reading the lead judgment, Justice Tijjani Abubakar upheld the decision of the appeal court and dismissed the appeal.<\/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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5440,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5438"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5441,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5438\/revisions\/5441"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}