“To conquer frustration, one must remain intensely focused on the outcome not the obstacles.”
—T F Hodge
By Cosmas Omegoh
Early in the week, a voice of despair rang out from the country’s Sahel Savanna belt. Shrill and forceful, it was the clear voice of Governor Bello Matawalle of Zamfara State.
His voice which many heard was as restless as ever.
Governor Matawalle was intensely buffeted by the unending wind of banditry sweeping through his state without end.
Thus, Matawalle’s message was loud. He was certain on what he wants his people to do: arise, take up your arms and defend yourselves, less you perish. Indeed, he wants his people to defend themselves against the onslaught of bandits who are ruthlessly on the rampage.
Indeed, it is no joke. From every front, Zamfara is helmed in by felons from the Futa Jallon region and its fringes. The urchins on the march are powerful. They have the hapless and helpless Zamfara folks in their throe. Villages and hamlets are under their spell. They do to them what locusts do to greeneries; they raze settlements and take down the residents in a manner so mindless, so gruesome. Then they occupy, and run riot on the conquered areas, rendering them ungoverned and ungovernable.
As it stands, the long-suffering rural folks of Zamfara State are in a quagmire, having been left with a tall mountain to climb. They are currently ruled by fear and tension. The air around them is always still and tense, smelling of death and distress each time. Their challenges now border on the existential. A people hitherto savouring life in their rural, rustic setting unfazed about civility are now asking “who did we get here?” That is the multi-million Naira question they can neither answer nor receive answers to.
As for Matawalle, there is no better way to tell his people that they are now cast between the rock and the hard place. For everyone of them, it is either they obey his order or they die.
Surely, when Matawalle spoke, he tried to let out steam. Speaking through his Commissioner for Information Ibrahim Dosara, Matawalle said: “Government is ready to facilitate people, especially our farmers, to secure basic weapons for defending themselves. Government has already concluded arrangement to distribute 500 forms to each of the 19 emirates in the state for those willing to obtain guns to defend themselves.”
Indeed, even one with a heart of stone might say similar things. Not when the characteristic news of wanton killings on a mass scale, kidnapping for ransom, cattle rustling, and the rest of the quantum of ills keep filtering in every day. Just as he is contending with one, another is bursting.
Over the past years, Matawalle has been shouting himself hoax. He wants everyone to hear. But the watching world is left wondering whether his voice now coarse has not been loud enough. Or whether the daily carnage in Zamfara is not bad enough to command appropriate attention. Or whether there is something else no one is telling a bewildered world ill at ease with the Zamfara State debacle. Or all!
Over the past years, the Federal Government has sustained a fight against the bandits in the North-western states of the country. Their activities first started like a rude joke. But now, not anymore! They have long made Zamfara State the epicenter of their operations. Very little success has been recorded in the fight to stop them.
Like the Boko Haram war, some analysts insist the campaign is being prosecuted in piecemeal. Each time, the Federal Government maintains that it is avoiding what it calls “collateral damage” to the citizens should it launch an all-out engagement with the marauders.
But observers point at alleged extra-judicial killings, and burning of businesses and homes in some other parts of the country especially in the Southeast, by soldiers in their acclaimed fight with unknown gunmen. Such measures should be applied in Zamfara too.
Analysts believe that Matawalle’s outburst was a clear product of frustration, having been pushed to the wall; that he is down, and right now fears no fall.
However, Matawalle in his frustration forgot that it is unlawful for the citizens to bear assault rifles. It is not in the nation’s law books. Besides, how would the impoverished people of Zamfara raise money to buy arms and face the bandits? Or would they square off with the enemy with the dane guns? These are questions left for him to answer.
For what Matawalle said, he was surely not on the same page with the police. The Zamfara State Commissioner of Police, Ayuba Elkana, had reminded him that the embargo on firearms licence is still in place.
He further recalled that the police had stopped issuing licence to citizens who wished to acquire their own guns.
Even Yoruba socio-cultural organisation Afenifere has been unsparing to Matawalle, declaring: “If anything, such a directive is an open declaration of failure on the part of the government.
“This is why we are strongly advocating for the establishment of state police.”
However, sadly, each day Matawalle is inundated with news of successes of the bandits who keep gaining grounds.
Recall that over time, Matawalle had inaugurated about four committees on security matters to fight banditry, and also bought 20 new Hilux vehicles and 1,500 motorbikes for various security operations.
He had equally appealed to the bandits severally to embrace peace, but they didn’t listen. They want none of his appeal to abandon their evil path.
He had identified traditional rulers and village heads said to be in sync with the bandits, and punished the indicted ones. Yet the ill wind continues to blow in the same direction.
Matawalle had signed into law, a “Bill for the Prosecution of Banditry, Cattle Rustling, Cultism, Kidnapping And Incidental Offences.”
He was upbeat the law would down-scale the wave of crime in the state, but he was wrong. Rather, criminality has continued to climb to frightening heights. And now, he is low on options – and that is clear for everyone to see.
Born on February 12, 1962, Matawalle was a teacher, who also worked in the Federal Ministry of Water Resources before joining politics in 1998. He ran for a House of Assembly seat in the Sani Abacha era and won.
He served as Zamfara State commissioner between 1999 and 2003 in the Ahmad Sani Yerima administration. His portfolios were Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, Environment, Rural Development and then Youth and Sports.
In 2003, he was elected to represent Bakura/Maradun federal constituency in the House of Representatives on the platform of All Nigeria’s People’s Party (ANPP). He was re-elected in 2007 on that ticket, but defected to Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on which platform he was re-elected for a third term in 2011. He remained a federal lawmaker until 2015.
Four years after losing his seat in 2015, he became PDP’s gubernatorial nominee in 2019. Fate made him the governor of Zamfara State after the Supreme Court disqualified the All Progressives Congress (APC) winner. The apex court had declared that the votes cast for the APC in that election were wasted, and ordered that the first runners up be sworn in as governor. Then in 2021, Matawalle defected to the APC.
Matawalle is said to be married to four wives, and has many children.