ABUJA-There
are indications that fresh trouble is brewing at the House of
Representatives over allegations that Chairman of the House’s Adhoc
Committee on Petroleum Subsidy Hon. Farouk Lawan was involved in a
bribery scandal worth $600,000 last month.
Already
there are speculations that the Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission (EFCC) may have invited Hon Lawan over the bribery allegation
which sources say have already resulted in the Speaker of the House
Hon. Aminu Tambuwal disowning the legislator over the messy incident.
It
was gathered that Tambuwal had confronted Lawan over the issue in a
meeting of Principal officers of the House where the Chairman of the
Adhoc Committee on Petroleum Subsidy was summoned to defend himself over
the allegation.
Sources
said that Hon. Lawan had initially denied the allegation when it was
put to him by the Speaker but froze in shock when he was confronted with
details of what transpired at the address where officials of an
unnamed oil company had given him the huge amount of foreign currency
which had been marked.
It
was further gathered that unknown to Hon Lawan, the entire incident was
recorded by video after which copies were sent to a former Head of
State who handed it over to Tambuwal.
It
would be recalled that in the wake of the controversy that was
generated over the Federal Government’s planned total withdrawal of
subsidy from petroleum products last January, the House of
Representatives set up the Adhoc Committee to probe how the subsidy
fund that was appropriated by the National Assembly in the past had been
disbursed.
Among
the findings of the House was that despite the fact that only N400
billion was appropriated for payment of oil subsidy in 2011, over one
trillion naira was spent. It was also alleged that a lot of the
payments were made to phoney companies.
Souce: Vanguard Newspaper.
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