The media is agog with reports of allegations and counter-allegations between the current Governor of Zamfara state, Dauda Lawal, and his predecessor in office, Bello Matawalle, who is also serving as minister of state for Defence.
Curiously, Zamfara state is often in the news for the wrong reasons. That state in the Northwest zone of the country is ravaged by bandits and other criminal elements, a situation that has seemingly defied every effort by security agencies to bring those urchins under control.
Now, two of the state’s most prominent politicians are compounding an already lousy story with accusations related to the role they played or failed to play, which is contributing to the intractable problem of insecurity in the state.
Our worry as a newspaper is that they are dragging God into the matter by talking of swearing with the Holy Book as if that has anything to do with it. It is common knowledge that public officers in Nigeria swear by the Quran or the Bible before they assume office. Yet that has never stopped them from participating in corruption and looting of the treasury.
For the average Zamfara state citizen, benumbed by the activities of bandits and other terrorists, who deny them the peace and quiet they need to go about their daily chores of making a living, the show of shame by Lawal and Matawalle is an undesirable distraction. The two have no right to drag the entire state into their messy political fight. At different times, the people gave them opportunities, through an electoral process, to manage their affairs, which included protecting their lives and properties.
To ensure that this role was effectively executed, the politicians allocated to themselves vast sums of money as security votes that were not accounted for. Even as the fight goes on, they are still getting money for the purpose of securing the state.
That we are still talking of insecurity in that beleaguered state is proof that the people’s confidence in them was misplaced. Even worse, that the money was wasted. To that extent, therefore, we join the hapless people of that state in demanding that they come out with the whole story. Why has banditry persisted in the state?
They should tell the people what they did and are still doing with the security votes and why the citizens cannot sleep with their two eyes closed.
We are aware that the political leaders in that state, as in many others, humiliated themselves by engaging in dialogue with the criminals they had vowed to eliminate. By publicly accepting that this dialogue took place, they are saying that they knew who they were. Then the question begging for an answer is, why were they not degraded?
There is a pervasive perception that the political leaders were and are still acting in cahoots with the criminals for some incendiary political motives. Lawal and Matawalle, by their utterances, which, in our opinion, have nuisance value, are telling Nigerians that they benefitted and are still benefitting from the insecurity situation in the state.
What is so disconcerting is that these are serving officers of state. That no one has seen the need to call them to order is another evidence of the abysmally low quality of governance the country is exposed to. Under normal circumstances, the office of the National Security Adviser, the Nigeria Police and, for that matter, the Presidency ought to have summoned them for questioning because they know a lot about the insecurity in Zamfara state that they are not telling the rest of us.
We have argued severally on this page that insecurity is thriving in the country because it has become an enormous industry operated by the high and mighty in society who cut across the social strata. Politicians pay lip service to imagined efforts to check it while the security agencies pander to the idiosyncrasies of the political class whose interest they serve. Meanwhile, the rut festers. The bandits know this and have keyed into the greed of the elite to the detriment of other members of the society, who are left to moan and groan in needless pain and agony.
As a newspaper, we urge the security agencies to invite the governor and the minister for a chat. Nigerians deserve to know the whole story about what is happening in Zamfara state. It is also public knowledge that illegal mining of solid minerals in the state is fueling the mindless activities of criminals there. Lawal is a serving governor and chief security officer of the state. Matawalle is the immediate past governor of the state and is now the minister of state for Defence. We need to know the link, what connects them to illegal miners and the purveyors of insecurity in the state. They should go the whole hog and tell the nation what they know, or just shut up.
