Farouk Lawan

Education and personal life

Lawan is a graduate of Bayero University in Kano. He is married with four children.

Political career

A People's Democratic Party (PDP) member. Lawan was elected in 1999, 2003, 2007 and again in 2011, making it 4 times elected member. Lawan was the Chairman of the House Committee on Finance under former Speaker Aminu Bello Masari. He identifies his legislative interests as "Appropriation, Information and Education".

During the late-2007 corruption scandal that caused former Speaker of the House Patricia Etteh to resign, Lawan led the Integrity Group, an alliance of Representatives opposed to Etteh. He is now considered a strong candidate for the governorship of Kano state.

Fuel Subsidy Scandal

In January 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 a fuel subsidy that resulted in the doubling in the price of fuel. The Committee’s report released in April the same year revealed a huge scam in which Nigerian fuel companies were being paid hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies by the government for fuel that was never delivered. It was estimated the scam cost the country $6.8 million.

In February 2013, Lawan was charged with corruption after he allegedly accepted $500,000 from Femi Otedola, a Nigerian billionaire oil tycoon, as part of a $3 million bribe Lawan had solicited from Otedola. Otedola claimed that Lawan demanded the bribe in order to have his company, Zenon, removed from the list of companies that the committee had implicated in the scandal. The initial fuel subsidy report said that Zenon owed more than $1 million to the government, but legislators later voted to remove the firm from the final report. Lawan said that he accepted the money in order to expose blackmail and informed the committee and Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) about it.