Special advyiser on Information and Strategy to President Bola Tinubu, Mr. Bayo Onanuga, has dismissed accusations that Bello Matawalle, Minister of State for Defence, was backing bandits.
Matawale, former Governor of Zamfara State, has often been accused of the charge by his successor and current Governor Dauda Lawal and others.
The Minister survived the gale of sacks that rocked Tinubu’s cabinet on October 23.
Explaining Matawale’s retention in an interview on Arise TV on Wednesday, Onanuga said the former Governor of Zamfara was not sacked because the office of the National Security Adviser (NSA) investigated but disproved the allegations.
Dauda Lawal, the Governor of Zamfara, said Matawale’s Government House was a conduit to pay ransom for kidnapped children of a VIP.
Lawal called for Matawalle to resign from the Federal Government.
Matawalle denied such links with bandits.
According to Onanuga, allegations against Matawalle were “mere fabrication.
“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.”
