The Court of Appeal, Abuja Division on Thursday, reduced the jail term of a former member of House of Representatives, Farouk Lawan, from seven to five years for the $500,000 bribe he took from a businessman, Femi Otedola, during a legislative probe into the fuel subsidy regime in 2012.
The panel of justices of the appellate court discharged and acquitted the former lawmaker on two of the offences he was earlier jailed for by the trial court in June last year.
Lawan also got a reduction of his jail term from seven to five years following his acquittal in two of the counts punishable by seven years jail term.
The court affirmed his conviction on the only remaining offence which the lower court punished with a five-year jail term.
Dismissing the first two counts, a three-member panel led by the court’s president, Monica Dongban-Mensem, ruled that the prosecution failed to prove that Lawan demanded and agreed to accept $300 million from Otedola, to exonerate his company from the list of firms indicted for fuel subsidy fraud in 2012.
But the Court of Appeal’s panel affirmed the decision of the trial court that Lawan, indeed, accepted a $500,000 bribe from the oil mogul, for which Lawan was jailed for five years.
The Court of Appeal affirmed both the conviction and the sentence passed by the trial court on the offence, but discharged and acquitted him in respect to the two other counts of demanding and agreeing to accept $3million from the Otedola to clear his company.
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The trial judge, Angela Otaluka, of the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, had after over nine years of trial, convicted the former lawmaker on all the three counts preferred against him by the Federal Government.
She convicted Lawan of corruption, corruptly demanding $3 million, and eventually taking $500,000 from Otedola to exonerate the businessman’s company from an indictment of fuel subsidy fraud in 2012.
The judge sentenced Lawan to seven years imprisonment on each of the first two counts and to five years in the third count and ruled that the sentences should run concurrently, implying that the convict was to spend seven years in jail.
But Lawan, dissatisfied with the decision, filed an appeal against the judgment, raising six issues with the judgement but only one, which earned him an acquittal regarding two of the three counts, were resolved in his favour by the Court of Appeal.
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