Who is Farouk Lawan?

Farouk Muhammad Lawan is a Nigerian politician and a four-term member of the House of Representatives for the Bagwai/Shanono Federal Constituency of Kano State. He was recently sentenced to seven years in prison by a High court in Abuja due to the $3 million bribery scandal in 2012.

Farouk Lawan was born on July 6th, 1962 in his hometown of Shanono in Kano State. He grew up in Kano where he attended primary, secondary and tertiary schools.

Lawan, who obtained his first degree at the Bayero University, Kano, started his career as a registrar at the Kano State Polytechnic. He later went into politics and became a force to reckon with.

He first came into the political scene in 1999 when he contested for a seat in the House to represent Bagwai/Shanono Federal Constituency of Kano State under the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). He served in the House for 16 years from 1999 to 2015.

Lawan who was the Chairman of the House Committee on Finance under the former Speaker Aminu Bello Masari led the campaign which forced the first Female Speaker of the House of Representatives, Patricia Eteh, to resign in 2007. Lawan’s group accused Eteh of unlawfully spending N620 million to upgrade her official residence, and also awarding contracts to her cronies.

In 2012, Lawan chaired the House of Representatives committee that investigated the Nigerian government’s fuel subsidies. The committee was set up in the wake of nationwide strikes in Nigeria after President Goodluck Jonathan removed fuel subsidy. Lawan’s committee said in its report that it discovered a lot of fraudulent activities. It said a whooping $6.8million was paid for petroleum products subsidy that were never delivered.

However,  in the course of the investigating companies involved in the fuel subsidy scam, Lawan was indicted with a bribery scandal. In a meeting with billionaire oil magnate Femi Otedola, he was seen on tape receiving $500,000 in order to cancel the former’s name from the report before presenting the report to the House.

While the bribery scandal did not only dent his anti-corruption stance, it also affected his chance of returning to the green chamber in 2015. In the course of the trial, Otedola had insisted that the operation (to give bribe to Lawan) was done with the full knowledge of the DSS in the bid to “catch a corrupt politician in the act”.

While Lawan admitted to receiving the amount, he however insisted it was meant to expose the businessman, and to convince the House of the pressure its committee investigating fuel subsidy fraud, faced.  For 8 years, Lawan was a regular visitor in courtrooms to prove his ‘innocence of the allegations leveled against him. However, the trial judge, Justice Angella Otaluka convicted Lawan on a three-count charge on Tuesday.