An aide of Governor Bello Mohammed Matawalle of Zamfara State and those of his embattled deputy, Barrister Mahdi Aliyu Gusau, have traded allegations over financial mismanagement.
The Principal Private Secretary to Gusau, Mr Aminu Umar, is challenging Matawalle to explain to the public how he spent over N31bn he collected in 31 months.
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Umar wants the governor to give detailed explanation on how he utilised the amount he received as security vote, cash allocation to his office, office of his principal private secretary and the government house in 31 months.
The PDP chieftain said in 31 months of Matawalle’s administration, he collected N600 million as ‘security vote’ monthly; N350m as ‘Cash Allocation’ for his office; N30m for the office of his PPS and N30m as cash allocation for government house, amounting to N1.1bn. The amounts, he said, when multiplied by 31 amounted to N31.3 billion.
Responding, the Special Adviser to Matawalle on Public Enlightenment, Media and Communication, Zailani Bappa, dismissed the allegations as mere propaganda.
“If they have concrete evidence against the executive governor let them write petition and channel them to the appropriate authorities. This is to tell you that they are too lazy to find out what happened.
“Their principal partook in the running of the state government for about two and a half years but why didn’t they raise the matter since then,” he said.
Meanwhile, the seven-man panel set up to investigate alleged gross misconduct and abuse of office levelled against Gusau has commenced sitting.
The secretary to the panel, Sani Tsafe, confirmed that he had served the deputy governor with all the necessary processes/notice through electronic means.
