Farouk Lawan Must Resign Now and Face Trial – Keyamo

Lagos-based legal practitioner, Festus Keyamo on Wednesday said the embattled and suspended Chairman, House of Representatives Ad hoc Committee on Fuel Subsidy Regime, Mr.Farouk Lawan, must resign immediately and face criminal trial for allegedly collecting money from the Chairman of Zenon Oil, Mr. Femi Otedola, to influence his committee’s report.

In a communiqué released by the lawyer, he asserted that the “sequence of undisputed facts” of the scandal showed that Lawan “collected bribe purportedly on behalf of his committee to doctor his report”. The lawyer wondered why Lawan refused to involve any law enforcement agency in his purported sting operation and why he only waited for the scandal to break out before taking any step.

According to Keyamo, “Farouk Lawan must stop this dance of shame and save that House of whatever is left of its credibility by resigning from office immediately and face his criminal trial squarely. It is, indeed, himself and his hired goons that are turning this episode into a theatre of the absurd, and not the other way round.”

“A few hours after collecting the dollars, Farouk Lawan stood up on the floor of the House and, instead of exposing Otedola, he was actually shielding him by convincing his colleagues to remove Otedola’s company name from the list of indicted companies in the report,” Keyamo said. Festus Keyamo also dismissed the investigation by the House Committee on Ethics and Privileges, of the scandal describing it as “nothing but a laughable sham, a diversionary and disgraceful enterprise with a pre-determined end, an unconstitutional and illegal exercise and Nigerians must ignore it.”