The investigative panel set up by the Kano State House of Assembly to look into the allegations of bribery against the state’s Governor, Abdullahi Ganduje, has asked him to appear before it on Friday.

Secretary of the probe panel, Mujtafah Adamu, said the letter inviting Ganduje to come and state his own side of the story was sent on Thursday, October 31, a day after another video of Ganduje purportedly receiving bribes from a contractor, was published on the social media.

The lawmakers asked Ganduje to attend the hearing alongside his lawyers if he so wishes, while a copy of the video was also sent to the governor alongside the letter of summons.

The letter was signed by the chairman of the committee, Baffa Danagundi.

An online newspaper, Daily Nigerian, had accused Ganduje of receiving kickbacks amounting to over five million dollars from contractors that work for the state government.

The paper then backed the allegations up with videos which showed  Ganduje collecting several wads of dollar bills from a man whose face was not shown, and stuffing them away in his flowing garment and in a brown manila envelope.

But Ganduje denied the allegations, saying the video was cloned and that it is a cheap piece of blackmail by his political opponents.

So far, three of such video clips have been released on the social media and on credible online newspapers, and the publisher of Daily Nigerian, Jafar Jafar, who himself has testified before the investigative panel, said the clips were 15 in total, nine of which clearly showed Ganduje’s receiving the bribes.

Jafar narrated to the lawmakers during his testimony that a friend of his who is also a contractor for the Kano State government agreed to attach clandestine cameras to his kaftan in order to capture the recordings.

He said the friend agreed to the plan because he was fed up by the incessant demand of the governor for a kickback ranging from 15 to 25 per cent for every project executed in the state.

Jafar maintained that the video clips were not cloned, saying that before his media outfit publishes stories, pictures or videos on its website, they undergo several levels of verification to establish their authenticity or otherwise.