Senator Kabir Marafa, representing Zamfara Central in the National Assembly yesterday said for failing to safeguard lives and property of residents of the state, Governor Abdul’ aziz Yari, ought to have been impeached. Marafa, who stated this while briefing State House Correspondents, after a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, blamed the state’s House of Assembly and the media for Yari’s continued stay in office. He described Yari, who is also the Chairman of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF), as a man who lacks conscience. Reacting to the killings In the state including that of 11 persons confirmed killed during an attack on a viewing centre in Zamfara in the early hours of Thursday, he accused the media of not showing enough concern or pay much attention to happenings in the state.
The Senator, who condemned in strong terms Yari’s public resignation as chief security officer of the state, said: “I heap a lot of blame on you the media the way and manner you handled it and number one culprit is the state House of Assembly, if I was a member of the state House of Assembly, I would have initiated impeachment of the governor because he lacks conscience, then the media ought to have done much more than what they didn’t. “This is part of the problem we have as a people, when problems happen in other states they tend to be overblown but when they happen in another state nobody cares and Nigeria is supposed to be seen as one country.
“For a chief executive to come out publicly to say that he has resigned as the chief security officer of a state he or she is supposed to accompany that statement with a resignation. “You cannot be spending state funds on security and lives and property are not safe, number one responsibility of any government is protection of lives and property and any person that cannot protect the lives of people he superintends he or she is supposed to resign.” Asked if he was calling on the governor to resign, Marafa said, “I don’t have to call on him to resign, this is something that every Nigerian is supposed to say and he himself if he has conscience and he knows what leadership is all about and he is quite knowledgeable in Islam and if he takes the teachings of Islam very seriously, he would have resigned in the real essence of the word rather than making mere pronouncements that he has resigned as chief security officer.
“You only take the sunny side of opposition but the ugly side you say you are not responsible. When it comes to the money of Zamfara State he is the governor of Zamfara State, when it comes to the protection of lives of the people of the state then it is President Buhari that is responsible.
“And the worst thing that I always say is that this is the first person that has unfettered access to the President. Have you been telling the president the truth? This is where the challenge lies. “When he comes here he tells you that the president is doing very well, when he goes back to the state he says security is not his responsibility but that of the President and he didn’t do it.”