Kano State Government has received a total sum of N321.1 million donation from various sources to support the families of the late 22 Kano athletes.

Leading the financial support ‎is Nigeria’s First Lady, Oluremi Tinubu, who donated N110 million to the families of the 22 Kano athletes, who lost their lives in the ghastly road crash in June.

Tinubu donated N5 million to each of the families to ease the burden of loss and support their recovery.

The deceased young athletes and sports officials perished near Chiroma Village, while returning home from Abeokuta, Ogun State, where they represented Kano in the yearly National Sports Festival.

Meanwhile, Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf has approved an additional N130 million to support the families of 22 athletes and 10 injured. While the relatives of the deceased got N5 million each, those with injuries received N2 million each and a plot of land.
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Earlier, the state government had offered an initial N22 million, with N1 million each given to the bereaved families shortly after the incident, and those injured were given N500,000 each.
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In a statement by the Governor’s spokesperson, Sanusi Bature Dawakin Tofa, the governor also disclosed ‎other notable contributions, including N33 million from Ogun State Government, Jigawa State Government N20 million, and N2.2 million from Sagir Koki.

MEANWHILE, outrage has continued to trail the First Lady’s humanitarian donations, which have hit about N12.9 billion in the past two years, as a member of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Gombe and a rights group urged the wife of the President to explain the sources of the funds.

In a statement made available to The Guardian, the National Coordinator of Human Rights Writers Association (HURIWA), Emmanuel Onwubiko, noted that even if it was being done in humanitarian terms, the entire spectacle was shameful, adding that President Bola Tinubu had continued to encourage opacity in public spending.

HURIWA claimed that the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu had shown that it was not a respecter of the revered principles of transparency and accountability.

While lamenting that the President had allowed key members of his immediate family to continue to carry out activities that do not conform to the key principles and templates of good governance, HURIWA remarked: “In a democracy, every office created by law is governed by law, and that of the wife of the president is not a legally recognised office.”

THE chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Gombe State described the President’s wife’s action as a clever way of buying votes, stressing that the First Lady knew that her husband had impoverished Nigerians and wanted to court them from the back door.

The chieftain, who pleaded anonymity, asserted: “She is a clever woman and knows how to support the husband; what she is doing could be described as soft campaigns, because she has been in politics and knows how to mobilise voters to her side.”