Attempts to involve the Speaker of the House of Representatives, AminuWaziriTambuwal, in the $620,000 bribery allegation against the former chairman of the adhoc committee of the House of Representatives investigating the Management of Fuel Subsidy, Hon Farouk Lawan, and businessman, Mr Femi Otedola, took a new dimension over the weekend with the police asking the Speaker to help facilitate the transfer of the alleged money to the force.
LEADERSHIP gathered that working with certain people in the presidency, the new plot was hatched to implicate the Speaker and to later serve as ground for his impeachment since using the Farouk Lawan angle.? Lawan had been cut off with his suspension and abandonment by the House.
A source who spoke with LEADERSHIP? said that Lawan was asked to stir up more controversy by insisting that the principal officers were involved in the deal and that the marked money was in the custody of the leadership of the House.
The lawmaker, who was also suspended as chairman of the House Committee on Education, was also reportedly asked to say that he did not act alone as alleged by reports, but that he was acting with a group of lawmakers in the House, including the chairman of the committee on Drugs, Narcotics and Financial Crimes, Hon Adams Jagaban.
He said: “The Police, working with a certain group of people in the presidency, told him that since he had been abandoned and even suspended by the House without first hearing from him, it was better for him to pull down the House by linking lawmakers to the deal, and to also maintain that he briefed the House on the bribe. He was also advised to say the money was with Jagaban and the leadership of the House and at no point did he act alone”.
The source added that the group behind the plan hope that with the controversy and uproar that his accusations will create, the resolutions of the report will no longer be respected on the basis that it was compromised.
Another source, a second term lawmaker, Hon Eseme Eyiboh, said it was a celebration of confessed corruption and criminality that despite admitting that he gave a bribe to have his companies delisted from the list of indicted companies, no anti-graft agency has made any move to arrest and arraign him.
Eyiboh, Chairman, House Committee on Donor Agencies and Civil Societies, said while reacting to statements allegedly made by Otedola, that the resolution of the emergency session of House on Friday was a celebration of corruption.
“Mr Femi Otedola must know that his confession of intention to procure the delisting of Zenon Oil and Gas from the list of the ‘termites’ of our oil subsidy regime and his subsequent act of giving $620, 000 to that effect has established a (actusrea and mensrea- agreement of act and intention) criminal? cause of action,” he said.