20th November, 2025
ALL PROGRESSIVES CONGRESS, ZAMFARA STATE HEADQUARTERS,
BYE PASS, GUSAU.
ONE TRILLION NAIRA: GOVERNOR DAUDA LAWAL MUST PROVIDE DETAILS OF EXPENDITURE FOR ZAMFARA PEOPLE
The Zamfara State APC came across a new rejoineder from Zamfara State government trying to cover its gross abuse of financial records and diversion of the money collected of over one trillion naira from the federal government within two and half years in office
Why Zamfara government is always apprehensive at the mention of money either received from federal allocation or generated as internal revenue is because of lack of transparency whereby the former banker now serving as chief executive has evolved crooked means of subverting state resources in a way no one can question, instead, uninformed officials especially information managers will be fighting tooth and nails, mostly invoking open insults in defence of what the government gets and how it utilised same transparently.
A very ready and common source of attack for the PDP led government under governor Dauda Lawal is the immediate past administration of former governor now Minister of State for Defence, Dr Bello Mohammed Matawalle of the All Progressives Congress APC.
In spite of the fact that the PDP government has all the information on Matawalle at its finger tips, it resolved to abandon those to take Matawalle to the gutters, an effort the ruling state government and its stooges always fail.
Matawalle, a minister and full fledged cabinet member in the federal executive council is certainly knowledgeable of the money received by the Zamfara State government while as a former governor of the same state knows how it was, during his time and how more money is being pumped into the state system without commensurate progress achieved.
It is therefore critical to understand, when Matawalle recently querried what the Dauda Lawal led administration has done with over one trillion naira released to it by the federal government in less than three years, the government flared and instead of coming up with a defence, its Commissioner of Information, Dantawasa who has perpetually remained ignorant in governance came attacking Matawalle without addressing the issues raised.
Without mincing words therefore, the PDP government under governor Dauda Lawal should simply publish its statement of account from 29th May, 2023 with money received from federation account, separating state and local government, then put this sum into all the projects either executed or ongoing including the over estimated contract sum, one will still see the money being stolen vividly.
In addition, this one trillion naira does not include funds from donor agencies, Corona virus recovery funds, federal development levy support, N10 billion monthly security support fund and 20 billion subsidy removal relief funds which most citizens of the state are not aware of, these too form part of our challenge on the government to make public and how they were utilised by (Sheikh) Dauda Lawal.
Zamfara people should go to Kaduna and Abuja to see the gigantic private projects being executed by the governor including but not limited to an estate with over 1000 houses in Lugbe, Abuja and the one opposite the Kaduna State House of Assembly which are coming from among other means, revenues collected from even small scale business owners as low as okada and keke Napep operators, akara sellers and wheel barrow pushers who can barely make out their daily meals.
Even though the Commissioner of Information claimed the state government has never collected any form of loan, we can excuse his ignorance because he isn’t carried along in the high level maneuvers of the government which sometimes are signed under secretive connivance among selected members which consider only one or two persons from the state House of Assembly.
While Matawalle can still beat his chest for doing and achieving his best with limited resources when he was governor like road construction of Canteen daji to Unguwar Gwaza roundabout with less than N500 million, Dauda is back on the same road which was still good and he claimed to have awarded the contract at a mind blowing cost of N14 billion with many people comparing how they were compensated under Matawalle over their property and the neglect they suffer under the Dauda rule, a development that is forcing most of the small scale business owners out of business and making survival herculean.
Other infrastructure put in place during Matawalle’s administration include construction of chediya ukku- gidan mayana- tullakawa road, Collage of Islamic science road, kaiwa-lamba- gidan goga off Kaura-Shinkafi federal highway, Kasuwa Danjimma- yardantsi- kwanar mailana road, Daza housing estate access road, Tudun Wada tankin-ruwa- firadakwadi- cocin kwano road, Sabuwar hanya junction-yartsamiya-malam maigidan kaiwa road, Jb Yakubu round about to Yankatako road and old Yardole Juma’at Mosque- Jangebe House road and bayan Daula Hospital- Gamzaki- Abuja Barracks junction- sunny fast food road among others in the roads construction.
Other development projects executed included total renovation and upgrading of Zamfara State House of Assembly, total reconstruction of government House,Gusau, construction of Kaduna governor’s Lodge that has now been converted to hotel by governor Dauda Lawal, construction of Police Barracks/residence in Maradun, construction of Abuja liaison office of Songhai street which has also been converted to a hotel by governor Dauda Lawal, renovated state government Lodge of sapele close where Dauda is using now, constructed 18 challets at Gusau government house and renovated the Zamfara radio and goldcity FM while the state television construction work had already reached 90 percent stage of completion before he left office.
This do not include the 147 primary health care constructed across the 147 wards and purchase of security operational vehicles, renovation of schools among other development projects too numerous to mention.
But the Dauda administration, apart from sacking business owners, the government and the governor have brutally remained adamant after sacking over 3000 civil servants, yet when he was in office as governor, Matawalle regularised the employment of 1400 workers in addition to recruiting thousands others including political appointees in order to create job opportunities, empower youths and provide food on the table for families.
On the issue of insecurity where the Commissioner again displayed his ignorance or it could be part of the governor’s nonchalance to the matter, because Zamfara State is facing the worst security situation than ever before in which even the state capital, Gusau came under siege with the kidnap and killing of individuals while for for the first time, all roads leading to the state are closed for motorists from 6pm, just last Saturday, a chieftain of the APC, Umar S/Fada Moriki was killed while (according to a Daily Trust report), 64 people were kidnapped, as for the security carefree governor Dauda, he’s busy fighting for power control in the PDP that he couldn’t even send a delegation to condole or sympathise with affected families and communities. Recall that during Matawalle’s time, all the 14 local government headquarters were safe.
PDP MUST know that Zamfara people are wiser now and have made up their minds to cast their votes for the APC in 2027 as they demonstrated at the recent by-election for Kaura-Namoda South State House of Assembly where the APC overwhelmingly defeated the ruling PDP in the state.
Matawalle, a son of Zamfara State, immediate governor and now a Minister of State for Defence in the federation offers a sterling opportunity for the state government especially governor Dauda to join hands with him in flushing out bandits from the state, but it is disheartening that the governor always sees the minister as an enemy who must not be patronised no matter what, even if the bandits will clear the whole state.
This he demonstrated at many fora, either directly himself or by his aides including when once at the northern leaders summit organised at the Shehu Musa Yaradua Center, Abuja, Matawalle on arrival, went to shake hands with governor Dauda but was publicly snobbed by the latter, and as if that was not enough, when President Tinubu directed Matawalle to relocate to the north West region to personally coordinate the onslaught against bandits, the Minister approached governor Dauda in order to set up base in Zamfara State but the governor blocked all channels of communication against the minister until the Sokoto state government anxiously gave site to carryout the operations.
What we require now from the Zamfara State government is to publish the statement of its accounts in national dailies for people of the state to access the actual amount received from the federal government since they are denying receipt of more than one trillion naira which we believe they will never do such to expose themselves.
Let them understand that state financial expenditure is not a government secret, citizens have the right to know how much is collected and spent.
So if they fail to publish the Zamfara State government accounts as required by the law annually, we are going to use freedom of information Bill to request the release of the bank data.
Yusuf Idris Gusau
APC Publicity Secretary
Zamfara State
20th November, 2025
