By Ismail Auwal
As the ignominy of the news that the University of East Carolina in the United States of America (USA) has denied ever appointing Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje of Kano State its visiting professor, details are emerging on how the scam was executed.
Sahelian Times’s investigations revealed that the governor was duped with active connivance of some of his close allies, who introduced Professor Victor Mbarika, a professor with East Carolina University to him.
The academic, as the university has confirmed, independently made the weird professorial appointment to Ganduje, who is, however, desperate to shore up his image which suffered a great deal since the story of his bribe videos scandal emerged.
Mbarika has founded what he called, “International Centre for Information Technology and Development”, with a website address www.icitd.com. Curiously, the website has a banner and emblem of Southern University and A&M, a university in Louisiana.
However, a simple google search would have saved the state government from embarrassment.
“It will only require a basic knowledge of IT to know that a university with the reputation of East Carolina will not use .com as a domain,” an IT expert told Sahelian Times.
Few hours after Sahelian Times sent an email of enquiry about the authenticity of the award, the professor and his group developed another website with address http://demo.fancyread.com/ to cover up their scam.
The new website carries the East Carolina University emblem and address. The website showed that the centre is located at room 349 Slay Hall, next door to Mbarika’s office whose address is room 348 Slay Hall.
The website, however, did not give an email or website address despite being listed under “Our Contact” at the bottom of the site, it only has a phone number.
Names like: Senator Barrister Ike Ekweremadu, Olukoya Ogen, Shettima Abdulkadir Saidu, Azeez Olaniyan were found listed as “visiting Professors” to the center.
Sahelian Times gathered that, the professor allegedly didn’t not find it difficult to convince the governor to rise to his bait.
This is not the first time, the governor was allegedly duped by African- Americans residing in the United States, as he was once said to have been scammed by a group who awarded him US citizenship.