The Ganduje corruption videos

In scenes reminiscent of Nigeria’s Nollywood where videos are released in series, for the past weeks, series of videos have been trending online allegedly showing the Kano State Governor, Abdullahi Ganduje, purportedly collecting brides from contractors. The videos show a man stocking wraps of US dollars in his ‘babanriga’, a traditional cloth common in the northern part of the country. When invited by the Kano State House of Assembly to explain the videos, the publisher of Daily Nigerian, Jafaar Jafaar, who published the videos insisted the person on the videos is the governor, Ganduje.

According to Jafaar, the said videos were recorded in 2017 after series of complaints from one of the contractors handling projects in the state, that Gnaduje allegedly collects kickbacks from him. According to the contractor, the kickbacks run up from 15% to 25% of each project carried out in the state. In one video, a man is seeing pocketing money, which Jafaar puts at $230,000. The alleged bribe collected is said to have run up to N750m due from N3bn contracts awarded in the state.

“More than two years ago, a contractor friend of mine complained to me that the governor had been receiving kickbacks, ranging from 15 to 25 percent, for every project executed in the state from contractors. “We then agreed to plant spy cameras on his Kaftan lapel so that he can capture the brazen act in hard evidence. He captured at least 15 clips, nine of which fully showed the governor’s face, body and hands collecting bundles of dollars”, Jafaar alleged.

Ganduje has denied any wrong doing, insisting the videos either do not exist or were doctored. But Jafar maintained the videos are authentic and have been so verified by his technical team before being published.

“In the case of the video clips in question, our in-house technical expert, the editor-in-chief and editorial adviser certified that the videos were original and not doctored contents.”

He also added that “experts from Amnesty International, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and Premium Times also watched the clips and certified their authenticity before we went to press.”

Governor Ganduje, on his part, has threatened the publisher and has even gone ahead to institute court actions against the authors.

Meanwhile, the EFCC has remained largely ambivalent on the issue refusing to confirm whether it will investigate the matter of not. Even though the governor enjoys immunity, it does not prevent the EFCC from investigating the governor as was the case with so many other governors in the recent past.

Much worse is the loud silence from the presidency who claims to be fighting a war against corruption. Since the videos started trending over three weeks now, the presidency hasn’t said a word about it in public. What Nigerians have been feed with are speculations; and not a few people have attributed the presidency’s silence to the politics of 2019.

To be sure, Governor Ganduje is in the midst of a thick political battle to retain his seat as governor and wad off the so-called influence of his former boss and mentor, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso who has moved to the opposition PDP and has vowed to dislodge the APC from Kano state. The President also got his largest vote from Kano state in the 2015 elections and governor Ganduje has again promised to deliver Kano’s over 5 million votes to the president in 2019.

The silence of the president and the EFCC is in sharp contrast to the treatment of former Ekiti state governor, Ayo Fayose, whose accounts were variously frozen by the EFCC and who was virtually encircled and kept under watch even while still governor. Immediately after the Ekiti gubernatorial election, which was won by APC’s Kayode Fayemi, EFCC was quick to tweet “The parri is over; The cloak of immunity torn apart, and the staff broken. #Ekiti Integrated Poultry Project/Biological Concepts Limited N1.3bn fraud case file dusted off the shelves. See you soon.”

Like we have always maintained, it may be easier to create agencies to fight corruption. It may be easier to launch a media campaign against perceived corrupt officials or even make scapegoat of some, but until the government gets serious and shows absolute commitment to the fight against corruption regardless who is involved, such wars on corruption are bound to fail. As it stands, it will be difficult for the government to convince Nigerians that it is seriously out to fight corruption when the president ignores strong and credible corruption allegations against his party members and shouts and puffs about corruption allegations in the opposition. That will make the President both morally and temperamentally unfit to fight corruption.