ACF wants Matawalle quizzed over sponsors of banditry
Urges northern traders to lift food embargo
AREWA Consultative Forum ( ACF) has called on the Federal Government to quiz Zamfara State Governor, Bello Matawalle, for claiming to know those behind banditry in the country.
Expressing surprise by the claim, the Arewa leaders challenged the governor to immediately unveil those behind the criminalities that worsened the insecurity in the country.
The National Chairman of ACF, Chief Audu Ogbeh, stated yesterday: “The ACF is stunned by a statement accredited to the Zamfara
Governor, Bello Matawalle, who reportedly told 17 emirs, who visited him over the kidnap of 317 school girls from Government Girls Secondary School Jangebe, that he knew the kidnappers, and that if he revealed their identity, Nigerians would be shocked.
“We ask the governor to reveal their identity and let Nigerians be shocked or even the heavens fall. We also ask the security agencies to question the governor on the identities of the criminals he is trying to hide.”
According to ACF, if the governor refuses to disclose their identities, he must be treated as an accomplice to the kidnapping.
The group added: “People in positions of authority that will help us out of this mess like Governor Matawalle must stop embarrassing the North and country with careless statements on a serious issue like the kidnapping of school children.
“Zamfara State and the north are way behind the rest of the country in educational development. The serial kidnapping of pupils in the North will only worsen a bad and unacceptable state of education in the North.”
ALSO, ACF has called for the immediate reversal of the decision by traders to cease movements of food and cattle from the north to south, saying Nigeria is not at war. It described the embargo by traders in the north on supplies to the southern part of the country as unpatriotic.
Ogbeh stated: “The ACF shares the concerns of Nigerians over the decision of the Amalgamated Union of Foodstuff and Cattle Dealers to stop movement of needed food from the north to the south.