Defence Minister Matawalle should resign over links with bandits, Zamfara Gov, Lawal alleges

Zamfara State Governor, Dauda Lawal has asked his predecessor and current Minister of State for Defence, Bello Matawalle, to step aside and clear his name on allegations of sponsoring bandits as well as money laundering while he served as governor.

 

Lawal who made the call in an interview on TVC on Thursday, said if Matawalle had any integrity left in him, he should honourably step aside and clear his name from the serial allegations leveled against him.

 

 

While responding to questions on the allegations against Matawalle, Lawal said: “If I were him (Matawalle), I would resign and face all the allegations (insecurity & money laundering) against me. Because from all the information we’re getting, my predecessor (Matawalle) was fully involved in some of this banditry issue,” Lawal said.

 

Lawal had also accused Matawalle of looting the state and leaving behind an empty treasury for him.

 

Speaking in an interview earlier on Channels TV’s Politics Today, Lawal stated that when he assumed office, he realized that over N250 billion was not accounted for under Matawalle.

 

“EFCC made a pronouncement sometime around May 21, 2023, or there about that it was alleging that N70 billion was stolen. That means before I took over. By the time I took over, I realized that that N70 billion they mentioned was a child’s play,” he said.

 

“So far based on available records, we realized over N250 billion was not accounted for. It is very funny. Let me explain to you the state I inherited. I inherited a very dysfunctional state. When I took over there was no N4 million in Zamfara State Government account – just empty.

 

“There was a backlog of salaries for four months. For three years, none of Zamfara’s indigenes wrote either WAEC or NECO. I had to settle N1.3 billion for NECO and N1.6 billion for WAEC. Some of the students got their certificates after we settled WAEC and NECO,” the governor added.