Africa’s leading industrialist, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, has
an advice for the committee set up by the Kano State House of Assembly
to probe a bribery allegation against its former speaker: ‘Don’t waste
your time, it’s all falsehood’.
Dangote Group spokesman, Mr. Tony Chiejina said the allegation has no foundation whatsoever and is an ‘outright falsehood”.
On 17 June, an online portal, DailyNigerian.com,
ostensibly fishing for traffic first published the unsubstantiated
allegation that Dangote gave the former Kano Assembly Speaker, Alhaji
Kabiru Rurum N100 million to kill a probe of Emir Muhammadu Sanusi.
The portal, with no address or names of its masterminds,
provided no evidence of the bribe. And it came after Governor Abdullahi
Ganduje had said the Assembly was prevailed upon by well meaning
Nigerians, led by the Acting President Yemi Osinbajo to drop the
investigation of the respected Emir over allegations of financial
misdeed.
Rurum responding to the allegation in an interview on 20
June, described the story as false, designed to tarnish his image and
bring the whole Assembly into disrepute.
He gave DailyNigeria.com one week within which to retract the report and apologise to the State Assembly or face legal action.
According to him, the report is also targeted at creating
tension and chaos among the lawmakers and ridicule the personality of
Dangote.
`The story was just a fabrication, a tissue of lies and
unjustifiable, because there was never a time I met with Dangote to
discuss such issue, not to talk of him offering bribe to us.”
He said that the intervention of Acting President Yemi
Osinbajo, Northern Governors and other notable Nigerians to stop the
probe was channeled through the state governor and not the assembly.
“It is a tradition that when such things happened, the Governor gets in touch with us as one of the three arms of government.
“Therefore, the governor forwarded his request letter
appealing for the suspension of the investigation on behalf of all the
concerned citizens.”
But it appeared fellow legislators believed the
unsubstantiated story by DailyNigerian.com, such that two weeks after,
they went for Rurum’s head, forcing him to resign on Monday 3 July.
Chiejina said, on Monday night, that the allegation has been ’embarrassing’, to Dangote.
“Aliko Dangote does not even know the embattled speaker,
Hon. Kabiru Alhassan Rurum, let alone being his friend as alleged by the
report”, Chiejina said.
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