Why Matawalle wasn’t sacked –Presidency

Special Adviser on Information and Strategy to President Bola Tinubu, Bayo Onanuga, has disclosed why the Minister of State for Defence, Bello Matawalle, was not affected by the recent cabinet reshuffle.

Onanuga stated this while speaking in an interview on Arise TV on Wednesday.

Matawalle was repeatedly accused by Governor Dauda Lawal of Zamfara State of working secretly with bandits in the north-west.

But during the interview, Onanuga said that the allegations linking Matawalle to the spate of banditry in the north-west was untrue.

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He added that the office of the National Security Adviser (NSA) investigated allegations bordering on the minister’s ties with bandits and found them spurious, saying they were politically motivated.

He said, “As far as I know, most of those things are just mere allegations. In one of them, I got something like that and sent it to the NSA and asked: ‘Have you heard about this?’

“The NSA said: ‘No. We have probed a lot of those things; they are not true’. People are just bringing out all kinds of fake things and allegations. That is why the man (Matawalle) is still in the cabinet.

“The president, I’m sure, has heard many stories about him. For him to be there shows that, like I have said, some of those things have been probed; they have been found not to be true.

“The NSA office has already investigated some of those allegations. They are mere fabrications.”