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What Is Left For Matawalle To Prove? By Bashir Hassan

March 5, 2022

The ‘Matador’-Matawalle has become the ‘King Kong’ now that the Zamfara State House of Assembly gave the ninth National Assembly a bit of respite with the impeachment of Mahdi Aliyu Gusau as the Deputy Governor of the state in a bizarre and ludicrous manner.  

The State House of Assembly   snatched the position of "rubber stamp" from the Ahmed Lawan-led National Assembly. 

We saw the manipulation of the process of legislative duties just to massage the ego of Governor Bello Matawalle and carry out his instructions.  To every observer, it was glaring that the impeachment was to produce a puppet as deputy governor and a political  robot who will be under the total control of Matawalle just as the House of Assembly.

Although, the House of Assembly listed out the offences of Mahdi Gusau,  the impeachment was because of the refusal of the deputy governor to join Matawalle in APC when the later decamped from the Peoples Democratic Party to the All Progressive Congress. Unlike Matawalle, Gusau demonstrated integrity and political identity and ideology as he maintained he will never dump the party which got him into office. Moreover, his father, Gen. Gusau is one of the founding fathers of the PDP.

Now that the impeachment is done with, I hope it brings about a cut in the poverty rate in the state which is as high as 70.8% and moves the state out of the 10 poorest states in the country. I assume this will eradicate strife, disease and hunger which has plagued the State alot. 

I hope with Mahdi Gusau out of the way, I expect Matawalle who many reports have it that is incapable of handling the economic activities of the state will now have what and all it takes to turn around the economic fortunes of the state.

I believe it is also safe to assume that Mahdi Gusau was responsible for the very low GDP of the state which stands at N4.123m as Matawalle claimed he was an agent of destabilisation. 

It is on record that Zamfara State  exceeded the debt servicing limits as stipulated in its 2020 budget. While it budgeted N3.71bn for repayment of internal loan principals in 2020, it ended up spending N9.71bn. Similarly, having spent N7.98bn on the repayment of interests on internal loans, it exceeded the budgeted amount of N3.71bn by 150.94%. With no record of any request  and  passage of supplementary budget by the state government and House of Assembly, I am wondering why this does not amount to "gross misconduct", breach of public trust and abuse of office by Matawalle and why he was not investigated, interrogated and impeached by the House for this obvious violation of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria(as amended). 

Matawalle will have to prove to Nigerians that the criminal impeachment of Mahdi Gusau will see to improve performance of student of the state at the next West Africa Examination Council(WAEC) exams and the state will move from its 36th position to a decent position as sign of improvement.

Lastly, the governor and his supporters have never hidden their desire to see Gen. Aliyu Gusau( Rtd) go down for the insecurity in the state. They have made snide remarks and such allegations and I hope with the removal of his son from office, both Gen Aliyu Gusau and his son will be brought to book for their roles in sponsoring terrorism in Zamfara State. A role which they played only in the head of the governor and his brainwashed and hired supporters.