Farouk Lawan: Battling to save a threatened integrity

June ,2012

JOHN AMEH writes on the emergence of Mr. Farouk Lawan as a power broker in the House  of  Representatives and his current battle with a $3m bribery allegation

Yet, his concern captured the feeling of the majority of lawmakers over what has become the $3m bribery scandal reverberating in the House of Representatives.

One of the few to have survived from the 1999 set of legislators, Lawan until the latest bribery scam, was perceived by many to be above board.

Such was the confidence reposed in Lawan that when the House under the current leadership of Speaker Aminu Tambuwal, decided to tread the dangerous path of probing the fuel subsidy regime in the country, it entrusted Lawan with the headship of the Ad-Hoc Committee on the Management of Subsidy Regime last January.

 ‘Mr. Integrity’, as he was fondly called by some of his colleagues, did a good job of the investigation with the other seven panel members.

After sitting for over three months, the panel turned in a revealing report, exposing how the nation was defrauded to the tune of over N1.070trn in subsidy payments by an oil cartel comprising government agencies, marketers and portfolio contractors.

The subsidy probe appeared to be the icing on the cake for the instant hero, as lawmakers basked in the euphoria to consider and adopt the recommendations of the report.

However, just like the panel members were taken aback, lawmakers, perhaps, did not know that the celebrated legislator negotiated a $3m bribe with oil businessman, Mr. Femi Otedola.

 From his own admission to the police, he indeed collected $500,000 from Otedola, while the committee clerk, Mr. Boniface Emenalo, collected another $120,000. The two sums ($620,000) were a part payment of the total bribe package of $3m.

 While Lawan claimed it was to expose Otedola, who wanted his indicted firm, Zenon Oil and Gas Limited, off the hook, the business mogul told the world that he set up the politician for extorting money from him.

 The State Security Service, who coordinated the operation for Otedola, has video evidence in circulation, revealing what allegedly transpired between the two.

For the first time in a long while, the entire House came down so decisively against its own, axing Lawan. He was stripped of the chairmanship of the ad-hoc committee and suspended as chairman of the Committee on Education, as evidence that he took the bribe became believable.

Washing off its hands, the House also asked anti-graft agencies to conduct a thorough investigation into the allegation and punish any offender found culpable. In-house, Lawan will also be called to question by the Committee on Ethics and Privileges.

Lawan has come a long way. The diminutive Peoples Democratic Party lawmaker from Shanono/Bagwai Federal Constituency in Kano State, drove into the National Assembly premises in a Honda ’86 Honda Accord car in 1999.

The English Language graduate, who was born in 1962, was instrumental in exposing the certificate forgery scandal of the first speaker of the 1999 set, Mr. Salisu Buhari. The campaign against Buhari, successfully saw him being forced out of office, paving the way for Umar Ghali Na’Abba to mount the speaker’s saddle.

In 2002 when the House moved against former President Olusegun Obasanjo for alleged “abuse of power,” Lawan was one of the most vocal faces of the legislature. He gave Obasanjo sleepless nights until the impeachment threat was eventually dropped.

Lawan has been chairman of several standing committees and various ad-hoc panels, including the influential Committee on Appropriation and Committee on Information/Media. Since 2007, he was chairman of the Committee on Education until last week.

In 2007, Lawan again championed the anti-corruption crusade against a former Speaker, Mrs. Patricia Etteh, who granted anticipatory approval for N628m renovation/vehicle purchase contracts.

He formed a group, The Integrity Group, to champion the campaign to remove Etteh from office. Indeed, he won the sobriquet, Mr. Integrity, after the campaign that resulted in Etteh throwing in the towel on October 31, 2007.

Lawan, who by now had become a kingmaker of sort, almost single-handedly installed Etteh successor, Mr. Oladimeji Bankole as speaker. It was not surprising that during the Bankole years, the kingmaker was held in awe and his word was law.

The former lecturer and later, registrar of the Kano State Polytechnic, had his way on almost every issue in the House, both on the floor and off the floor. Bankole consulted him and took his advice regularly. His capacity to mobilise members was awesome and ignoring him would be at the peril of the leadership.

Yet, under Bankole’s leadership, Mr. Integrity’s track record began to receive a dent and there were posers as to whether he had been a double-faced legislator all these years.

Not long after he mounted the saddle, the Bankole leadership was enmeshed in a N2.4bn car purchase scam in 2008. Nigerians and members had looked up to the Integrity Group to move against Bankole, but strangely, Lawan lost his voice. There was no more steam. Rather, the group reportedly worked behind the scenes to clear the leadership of complicity in the scandal. The House later exonerated Bankole.

Still under Bankole, in June 2010, the House suspended 11 legislators led by Mr. Dino Melaye. Their offence? They were calling the leadership to account over the alleged mismanagement of N9bn of the House capital budget. The matter was swept under the carpet and there was no word from Mr. Integrity.

In 2011, the House unilaterally approved an increase in the quarterly allowances for members from N27.9m to N42m. The leadership was forced to procure a loan of about N40bn in order to sustain the “illegal” allowances.

Bankole and his deputy, Mr. Usman Nafada, later faced charges in court over the expenditure before the case was quashed. However, nothing was heard from Lawan at the time and he benefited from the illegal pay cheque.

Lawan is loved to be hated by many colleagues for being a schemer, opportunist, yet influential lone-ranger who is said to live in the self-belief that he has answers to everything.

In spite of his influence, most members of the committees he had chaired did not flow with him, but tagged along because of the lawmaker’s perceived high esteem among members and outside the House.

The schemer in Lawan showed in the run up to the election of the leadership of the seventh House, where Tambuwal emerged as the speaker on June 6, 2011.

Insiders said that Lawan and the PDP structure had an initial plan to scuttle Tambuwal’s emergence because the party had zoned the seat to the South-West.

He was to be the arrow head of the opposition to Tambuwal. He was to either contest the seat so as to split the votes of the majority from the North or to use his influence to mobilise support for the party’s candidate from the South-West.

Either way, the plan was to stop Tambuwal from being elected as the speaker.

However, when Lawan discovered that the pendulum in the House swung in favour of Tambuwal, he quickly retreated and abandoned the plan.

The smart Lawan wormed his way to the Tambuwal camp by encouraging members to vote for him.

To prove that he was now repentant, Lawan was the only member who openly displayed his voter’s card on June 1, showing that he voted for Tambuwal, before dropping it in the ballot box.

As in previous regimes, he steadily became a key figure under Tambuwal, a reason, coupled with his acclaimed integrity records, that he was entrusted with the headship of the fuel subsidy probe panel.

But, it seems this time around, the bubble has burst. Members now know better.

As the saying goes, there is a time when one’s cup is full. Is this Lawan’s nemesis? Is this the fall of Lawan?

One ex-lawmaker, who is still licking her wounds for crossing Lawan’s path is Etteh.

Hear the embittered former speaker, ““Now, Nigerians know who is corrupt and who is not. It is a big shame, it has further ridiculed the image of the House. Basically, what we read in the newspapers does not come as a surprise having had relationship with him for a very long time. He is the leader of the cartel.

“I did not steal any money. What happened when they were calling for my removal was a mere anticipatory spending, no money was missing. Dimeji Bankole, whom Farouk installed, spent over N400m to renovate his official quarters, which I wanted to renovate with just N40m, and sold it to himself for N100m.

“I was removed not for stealing money but three groups sacked me for their selfish reasons. The first group was led by Farouk Lawan, who was annoyed that he was not given the Appropriation Committee.

“The second group was the fundamentalists, who would not like to bow down to the authority of a woman and the third group believed that since the Senate President is a Christian, therefore, the Speaker must be a Muslim. All these groups joined forces together to fight me.