Tell Magazine

As the magazine prepared for bed last week, there was no end yet to the bribe saga in which the House of Representatives is embroiled. Farouk Lawan, the legislator at the heart of the scandal, was still asking the police officers investigating the matter to give him more time to produce the $620,000 he allegedly collected from Femi Otedola, chairman of Zenon Petroleum. Since Lawan had earlier told the police that he turned over the bribe to another legislator in the House, Muhammed Abubakar, acting inspector general was said to have written to Aminu Tambuwal, speaker of the House, requesting for the money. The latter’s inquiry hit the wall as legislator that Lawan claimed to have handed over the bribe sum to said he was ignorant of the transaction. So where is the money?   The speculations making the round last week was that the money must have been shared by some legislators. If that was what happened, the dilemma Farouk and his collaborators have found themselves is not the inability to raise the total sum. After all, the bribe is only N96 million. That is chicken feed to many of the nation’s legislators. They are the highest paid in the world. The problem may lie in producing the exact dollars, believed to have been marked by the State Security Service in the “sting operation,” given to Lawan by Otedola.  However, another speculation was that Lawan may actually have the money but is holding on to it in an attempt…