Hafsat Ganduje, the wife of the Governor of Kano State, Abdullahi Ganduje, has been arrested by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
Ganduje’s wife was reportedly arrested on Monday over a bribery and land fraud case reported to the anti-graft agency by her son, Abdulazeez Ganduje.
Recall that EFCC had invited Hafsat to its Abuja headquarters on September 13, but she disregarded the invitation.
It was later gathered that the Kano State First Lady had travelled to the UK at the time to attend the graduation ceremony of her son.
A source familiar with the incident disclosed that Mrs Ganduje was arrested on Monday evening.
As of 6am on Tuesday, it was learnt that she was still at the EFCC headquarters.
Also recall that her husband, Ganduje, had previously been involved in a corruption-related scandal.
He, however struggled to untangle himself from the public perception that he is a corrupt public servant since 2018 when Daily Nigerian published a series of videos that showed the governor collecting money from a government contractor.
According to sources who saw Abdulazeez’s petition, he reported 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 35 million naira as “facilitation commission”.
Abdulazeez said he paid the sum in dollars to his mother, Mrs Ganduje.
“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,” one source added.
