Nigerian Senator, Lists Two Wives as Properties in Assets Declaration

Sen. Shehu Sani

Barely 48 hours after President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo made their assets declaration public, the senator representing Kaduna Central, Shehu Sani, has made public his assets.

Sani, in a statement on Saturday, declared that he had two wives and six children.

The senator’s assets and liabilities, he indicated, include a bank balance of N22m; seven houses in Kaduna, Abuja, Niger and Katsina states; “several vehicles,” two uncompleted office apartments in Kaduna; N5m in shares reportedly bought in 2007 and crashed in 2008; 30 books published in Nigeria, the United States and the United Kingdom with royalties; and a community journal titled "Peace Magazine".

According to him, making his assets declaration public is in conformity with the standard of transparent and exemplary leadership set by the President and Vice-President. He explained that the act indicated his submission to the public demand for integrity from all public office holders.

He said, “In a new Nigeria on a filtration process for a politically cleaner and decent future, I have decided to voluntarily make this public declaration. President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice-President Osinbajo’s public declaration of their assets is a moral challenge to all public officeholders.

“Their declaration challenges all men of conscience and docks all men who lay claim to self-dignity and self-worth. Their public declaration hangs a chain of guilt on the neck of all public officeholders.

“To refuse to publicly declare assets is to continue to carry the burden of a moral thorn of guilt, in a nation whose generation of leaders for so long stands in the dock of ethical court.”

The lawmaker noted that every public officeholder carried with him a badge of suspicion and distrust until he proved his innocence or degree of guilt.

He explained that there were no saints and angels in politics, but that the citizenry deserved to know the moral truth behind the façade of uprightness.

“A clean broom is needed to clean a dirty space. I chose to publicly declare and be pelted than to walk with the stain of suspicion and mistrust splashed on all public officeholders by a generation of curious citizenry,” he added.