EFCC Arrests Governor Ganduje’s wife

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has arrested Hafsat Ganduje, the wife of Kano Governor Abdullahi Ganduje, over a bribery and land fraud case reported by her son, according to PREMIUM TIMES. Following her refusal to comply with an invitation from the anti-graft agency, she was arrested a few weeks later.

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Earlier, Ejes Gist News reported that Mrs Ganduje had been invited to report to the EFCC’s Abuja headquarters on September 13, according to the report. Nonetheless, she failed to appear, prompting threats from the EFCC that she would be detained. Her sources later revealed that she had travelled to the United Kingdom at the time to attend her son’s commencement ceremony.

In a petition filed by her son, Abdualzeez Ganduje, Mrs Ganduje is being interrogated by investigators regarding allegations of land fraud.

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“She was arrested this evening (Monday),” according to a source who was aware of the arrest but did not want to be identified.

At 6 a.m. on Monday, this newspaper was told that Mrs Ganduje was still at the EFCC’s headquarters.

sources familiar with the matter said Abdulazeez had taken his mother, Hafsat Ganduje, to the EFCC, suggesting a pattern of corruption in which family members use their positions of power for personal gain.

Mgr Ganduje, the governor, had previously been implicated in a corruption-related investigation. He has been attempting to disentangle himself from the public perception that he is a corrupt public servant since the publication of a series of videos in 2018 by the Daily Nigerian that showed the governor collecting money from a state contractor.

In his petition, Abdulazeez claimed that he had been approached by a property developer who offered him hundreds of thousands of dollars in US dollars and at least 35 million nairas as “facilitation commission” in exchange for facilitating the acquisition of some plots of land near Kano.

In addition, PREMIUM TIMES has learned that Abdulazeez claimed he paid the money in dollars to his mother, Mrs Ganduje.

One source further explained that “three months later, (the property developer) discovered that the plots of land he desired and had paid the first family for had been allocated to other buyers, and he then requested to be reimbursed.”