Why Tinubu didn’t sack Matawalle — Onanuga
By Jeffrey Agbo
Special Adviser to President Bola Tinubu on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, has said that the Minister of State for Defence, Bello Matawalle, kept his job because the rumours peddled against him were false.
President Tinubu announced a reshuffle of his cabinet on Wednesday.
Former governor Matawalle, whose successor in Zamfara Governor Dauda Lawal has severally accused of fueling terrorism in the north-west, was not fired, a move which surprised many.
Reacting to this, Onanuga said in an interview on Arise TV on Wednesday that the allegations linking Matawalle to banditry in the north-west were untrue.
He added that the office of the National Security Adviser (NSA) investigated the allegations and found them spurious, adding that they were politically motivated.
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He said, “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.
“The president, I’m sure, has heard many stories about him. For him to be there shows that, like I have said, some of those things have been probed; they have been found not to be true.
“The NSA office has already investigated some of those allegations. They are mere fabrications.”
