The first family in Kano has been thrown into fresh crisis after the governor’s son Abdualzeez Ganduje reported his mother Hafsat Ganduje to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) over an alleged bribery and land fraud case.
Governor Abdullahi Ganduje’s son told the EFCC in a petition that he was approached by a property developer to help facilitate the acquisition of some plots of land in Kano with some hundreds of thousands of US dollars and at least N35 million as “facilitation commission”, Premium Times reports.
Abdulazeez further said in the petition that he paid the sum in dollars to his mother and, according to a source quoted by the online newspaper, the plots of land requested for were not granted the developer.
“But three months later, (the property developer) discovered that the plots of land he wanted and had paid the first family for had been allocated to other buyers and he then requested to be refunded,” the source was quoted as saying.
The newspaper also gathered that Mrs Ganduje failed to honour an invitation to the EFCC headquarters in Abuja for questioning last Thursday.
Both EFCC’s spokesman Wilson Uwujaren and a spokesperson for Kano State Government Mohammed Garba did not comment on the matter when contacted by the newspaper on Monday.
Meanwhile, the governor himself was involved in a corruption-related scandal when Daily Nigerian, in 2018, published videos showing him collecting money from a government contractor.