Otedola goofed on bribery allegation, says Olanipekun

By kamoru sakiru

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Chief Wole Olanipekun SAN

A senior Advocate of Nigeria(SAN), Chief Wole Olanipekun , has faulted Zenon Oil’s boss Mr. Femi Otedola over the alleged $620,000 bribe he gave to a member of the House of Representatives, Faruk Lawan.

Olanipekun  said the manner of the allegation by Otedola made it seem unreal to “every discernible mind because the claim and position he canvassed in his narration of how the $620,000 was offered to Lawan was not in tandem with the process of entrapping.”

He spoke in Ikere-Ekiti at the weekend at a luncheon he organised for members of the Ekiti State branch of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) to  mark the inauguration of the Ikere chapter of the association. 

Olanipekun said Otedola’s claim “failed to appeal to commonsense by exposing the fraud whole 40 days after he had allegedly offered the bribe to Lawan to kill the House oil subsidy probe”.

He added: “The matter was made easy for Otedola to handle because he claimed that Lawan came to his house in Abuja to collect the bribe. If actually he put the security in the know of how he was being allegedly pressured to offer bribe against his conscience, Lawan should have been arrested at that point.

“In security circles and anywhere in the world, the victim is arrested on the spot when entrapping is being applied. But this was not the case in this issue and that was where I thought all these allegations against Lawan are senseless, for now.

“Marked money is usually done by applying powder on the money and this cannot last more than 24 hours. So, this issue is beyond my comprehension for now.”

Olanipekun said since Lawan was not arrested at the point where the bribe was offered, the relevance of “entrapping” was lost as it means in security and legal terms “immediate arrest or on the spot capturing of a person involving in corrupt practices,l.

Olanipekun urged Nigerians to be cautious about the matter until investigations are concluded.