Foreigners buy gold with arms in Zamfara — Matawalle

Governor Bello Matawalle of Zamfara State says foreigners are exchanging arms for gold and other precious mineral resources in his state.

Matawalle said this on Tuesday while fielding questions from State House reporters after presenting some gold bars and other precious stones mined in his State to President Muhammadu Buhari in his residence at the State House, Abuja.

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“It’s very important to us as a government, particularly, the issue of insecurity, to know the root cause of insecurity. Zamfara state is blessed with many minerals resources and some people outside the country come in to buy gold and other precious stones and sometimes instead of paying people, they pay back with arms. I did some investigations. So, the state government will be buying some of these minerals so that we can block that chain. So, now the state government is engaging the miners. We’ll be buying some of this gold from them with the limited resources we have,” he said.

He said his administration decided to embrace the Presidential Artisanal Gold Mining Development Initiative to stop the criminal act being championed by illegal miners in the state.

Matawalle, who said the state government was now engaging the miners by buying some of the gold from them, stressed that he informed the president of the “worrying” activities of illegal miners.

The governor, while speaking on the latest security situation in his state, said the narration had changed with the improved efforts of the security agencies.

He opposed the call for sack of the service chiefs, saying what they needed now was full support from all stakeholders.

He said: “The narration has changed. You won’t be hearing of mass killings in the state because the security agencies are doing their best. I equally advised the president that those that are calling for the sack of the service chiefs is not the solution. Let’s support the security, we as the governors, we have a big role to play. We just have to support the security agencies.

“If the governors are not serious, they can’t be able to achieve what they want. I advised the president that all those calling for the sack of the security chiefs, they should think of the best way to support them to perform better instead of sacking them, even if you sack them, you’re bringing another one. So, let us use the one that we have. We’ll support them as a government.

“My state now is at peace and everybody is aware. We’ve more than 3000 policemen going round the mining sites in order to protect the mining site. We’ve the security. It’s just for us as leaders to support them. I believe we’ll see a lot of changes in terms of security in this country.”