Farouk Lawan, the embattled Chairman of the fuel subsidy probe panel in the House of Representatives, yesterday surrendered himself to police for interrogation over the $620,000 bribe he had confessed to receiving from an oil marketer, Femi Otedola. He was interrogated by the Acting Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Abubakar, and three other Police Commissioners including the head of the IG’s Special Task Force, CP Ali Ahmaduon.
Mr. Lawan arrived at the office of the police Special Task Force at the Louis Edet House Force headquarters about 4pm, in company of Boniface Emenalo, the clerk of his committee and five lawyers. He was
detained briefly before he was taken to the interrogation room where detectives quizzed him for several hours.
According to reports, Mr. Lawan was detained at the Police Headquarters till late Thursday evening.
Meanwhile, this revealing video below shows the moment where Mr. Lawan recommended to the House of Representatives that two of Mr. Otedola’s companies – Synopsis Enterprises Limited and Zenon Petroluem and Gas Limited be removed from the list of companies indicted by the committee for receiving forex from the Central Bank of Nigeria but failed to bring in the fuel.
According to the list, Zenon is alleged to have collected the sum of $232, 975, 385.13 while Synopsis Enterprises collected $51, 449, 977.47 for the year 2010 and refused to import any oil.
The Deputy Speaker, Emeka Ihedioha, who was presiding over the plenary asked the chairman of the probe committee, “Honorable farouk, is this recommendation coming from your committee?”
And Mr Lawan answered in the affirmative.
The companies were therefore removed from the list via an unanimous decision by the House.
What is on debate now is whether it was Mr. Otedola’s alleged ‘bribe’ speaking in his favour at that time or whether it was a honest recommendation by Mr. Lawan. This happened on the 21st of April, 2012.
Please watch the video below and share your thoughts.
News Source: Channels TV | Punch
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