Last Wednesday, when President Bola Tinubu constituted his cabinet, he appointed the immediate past governor of Zamfara State, Bello Matawalle, the Minister of State for Defence.
Mr Matawalle’s appointment has, however, raised a few eyebrows. During Mr Matawalle’s four-year tenure in Zamfara, the state was undoubtedly the most insecure in the country. During the period, terror gangs, locally called bandits, held sway across the state attacking communities, killing thousands of people, and abducting many more others in perhaps the largest kidnapping-for-ransom franchise in the history of the country.
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Though banditry, as the activities of these outlaws are described by the Nigerian media and by politicians, was rampant across the county’s North-west region, their activities in Zamfara State during the governorship of Mr Matawalle, who was the chief security officer of the state, were unparalleled.
Though as governor Mr Matawalle has no direct control over security agencies fighting the terrorists, he took some decisions some of his critics said may have exacerbated the crisis, including possibly preventing security operatives from capturing the most ruthless terrorist that operated in the state.
In 2022, when Matawalle asked the people of the state to arm themselves and fight terrorists, several analysts challenged his decision, calling it unwise.
“Giving access to citizens to acquire weapons means you are opening a new chapter of violence – an eye for an eye. It is not a decision informed by knowledge or reality of what is on the ground. By saying everyone should [get] a weapon, you are indirectly saying you cannot provide security of lives and property. Then the question is, as a governor, what are you?” Murtala Ahmad – Rufa’i, the author of “I’m a Bandit” and an expert on banditry in the North-west, said in an interview.
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‘Bello Matawalle as the minister of state for defence is a slap on our faces. This was someone who was governor of Zamfara State for four years but failed to make appreciable efforts to tackle the security situation due to his poor handling of issues,’ Sama’ila Balarabe, a senior lecturer at Hassan Usman Katsina Polytechnic, said.
Matawalle, banditry and Zamfara
Since 2011 terrorists have consistently carried out raids on mostly rural communities across Nigeria’s North-west region and parts of the North-central region.
These gangs rustle livestock, abduct local residents for ransom, carry out mass killings- sometimes of entire communities and force residents of farming communities to pay protection fees.
Zamfara State is in the North-west. It is one of Nigeria’s poorest states. According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) National Multidimensional Poverty Index, 78 per cent of the residents of the state are poor.
The activities of the terrorists worsened after the 2019 general election. And they began to gain international notoriety after laying siege on the Abuja -Kaduna Expressway, one of the most important roads in the north of the country, abducting travellers and other road users at will.
In October 2019, the government set up a committee on armed banditry in the state; The committee was headed by a former inspector-general of police, Muhammed Abubakar. The committee reported that between 2011 to 2019, 6,000 people were killed in the State.
In 2021, media reports revealed that in Zamfara State alone, 703 peoplewere killed, the highest in Nigeria. The number of those killed that year was a whopping 221 per cent increase from the previous year when only 219 peoplewere killed.
In early 2020, Mr Matawalle decided todialogue with terrorists. He explained that this would reduce attacks on communities. He later announced that he had granted amnesty from prosecution to bandits who handed over their arms o the government in exchange for cattle.But further details about the amnesty were not made public.
Some of the most notorious terror gangs in the state such as those led by Bello Turji, Alhaji Nashamuwa, Auwalun Daudawa, and Ado Aleru.
The peace accord lasted a year because, in 2021, Mr Matawalle said he would no longer grant amnesty to terrorists. Though he didn’t give details of why the truce failed, the governor said the terrorists have returned to their old ways despite the peace accord between the state and them, which he said made things difficult for the government.
The terrorists said the state government didn’t fulfil its promises to them. Neither the terrorists nor the state government what the exact pledges were.
From January to December 2022, the state witnessed a surge in attacks partly blamed on the collapse of an amnesty deal with terrorists.
[Premium Times]
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