Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso

Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso served two terms as Governor of Kano State (1999-2003, 2011-2015), as Federal Minister of Defence under President Obasanjo (2003-2006), and as Senator for Kano Central (2015-2019) before contesting the 2023 presidential election under the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP, finishing fourth). From 2015 onwards he has been the subject of repeated EFCC inquiries arising from a petition by Concerned Kano State Workers and Pensioners alleging diversion of about N10 billion in Kano State pension remittances during his second gubernatorial term, with funds redirected into 'Kwankwasiya', 'Amana' and 'Bandirawo' housing estates whose units the petitioners said were re-allocated to aides and cronies rather than pensioners. EFCC sealed a Kwankwaso-linked property on Miller Road, Kano in August 2021; interrogated him in Abuja on 16 October 2021; obtained an interim, then final, forfeiture of 324 houses (the three estates) at the Federal High Court Abuja on 3 May 2023 before Justice Inyang Ekwo; and in 2024 reopened an N2.5 billion pension-fraud strand of the investigation. He has also been named in (and denies) an EFCC probe of an N3.08 billion diversion of Kano LGA joint-account funds for his 2015 APC presidential primary, and was peripherally named in a 2020 N35 billion Ministry of Defence arms-contracts inquiry he disputed on the ground that he resigned as Defence Minister in November 2006 before the disputed 2008 contracts. To date Kwankwaso has never been arraigned or charged, no conviction exists, and the NNPP characterises the recurring EFCC interest as political persecution.