HONOURABLE AMINU TAMBUWAL AND THE LEADERSHIP OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES MUST RESIGN NOW.
(PRESS STATEMENT OF THE PUBLIC
INTEREST LAWYERS LEAGUE -PILL)
Prior to the public release of the House of Representatives Ad hoc Committee’s Report on the Oil Subsidy Scam, the Public Interest Lawyers League (PILL) received information from impeccable sources detailing how the Chair of the Ad hoc committee, Farouk Lawan solicited bribe and received bribe running into the sum of five hundred United States dollars from the oil tycoon, Femi Otedola.
And in a sting operation reminiscent of that in which the British undercover reporter, the fake Sheikh, had become legendary, Otedola played out the archetypal Sheikh and Farouk Lawan got caught pants down. And as Otedola has since claimed, and as the Public Interest Lawyers League’s sources have consistently claimed, the bribe transaction was caught on camera.
Beyond the fact of Farouk Lawan being the fall guy, at least in the eyes of the Nigerian public so far, there is something sinister about the way the network of corruption works in the House of Representatives.
Farouk Lawan is merely the face, disgraced by the outcome of his own perfidious adventure, of an orchestrated network of members who work the committee system to intimidate and harass sections of our polity for bribes.
The committee system feeds into the culture of settlement and patronage promoted by the leadership of the House. No one becomes chairman, or vice chairman and, or a member of a juicy committee if that individual has no capacity to deliver the perfidious. To deliver means to make monetary returns to the Speaker.
FACTS AND QUESTIONS The information available to PILL suggests that the Speaker, Honourable Aminu Tambuwal was informed of the activities of the Ad hoc committee chair, Farouk Lawan, a week before the report was released. This fact is today of public knowledge.
It is also in the public domain that Aminu Tambuwal confronted Farouk Lawan with the video clip of his criminal misdemeanour. Lawan is reported to have owned up, partly to a certain sum and not the bribe sums in full.
However, further revelations have forced Lawan’s hands and he has since accepted receiving the sum of five hundred thousand dollars from Femi Otedola. The questions that arise are:
1.Why didn’t the Honourable Speaker call in the Law Enforcement Agencies knowing that a prima facie case of solicitation, bribe giving and receiving had taken place?
2.Why didn’t the Speaker disband the Ad hoc Committee or asked Farouk Lawan and Boniface Emenalo to step aside?
3.Why didn’t the Speaker initiate a process within the House to discipline the members so fingered?
