The Zamfara state chapter of the People’s Democratic party (PDP) has strongly opposed Governor Bello Matawalle’s directive to the people of the state to bear arms and defend themselves.
In s press conference, the state’s secretary of the party, Faruku Ahmed said, the decision to allow people to bear arms could lead to anarchy and political vendetta against the opposition parties.
Ahmed maintained that, it was the sole responsibility of both the state and federal government to protect the lives and property of the citizenry.
He said, “Although the security issue is everybody’s business, to security the lives and property is the of any government on earth”.
“As peoce-loving and law-abiding, we fault Zamfarapo state and the Federal government for shifting such constitutional responsibility to ordinary citizens”.
“That it has been clear that the security bodies, groups and legal experts within and outside the state have opposed the firearms acquisition”.
He maintained that, “The ruling APC administrative failure has left Governor Bello Mattawale with no option but to manipulate the insecurity situation within the state to witch-hunt opposition parties in the state”.
Ahmed stated that, the present security measures taken by Governor Mattawalle were not different from the previous ones.
“As such, the PDP perceived the exercise as deliberate attempt to divert public resources and wrongly utilise the innocent young people estimated to 9,500 across the 19 Emirates for cheap publicity”.
The PDP Secretary therefore called on the the security agents to stop Governor Matawalle from his dangerous plan of allowing people to bear arms.
“We are calling on the Inspector General of police, the DSS and the NSCDC to be eagle eye on the ill- intention of targeting the opposition parties using various security committees established by Zamfara State government because the approach seems to be so tricky”.
Ahmed finally lamented that “Since the 2023 general elections were around the corner, Matawalle was determined to employ all necessary machineries to cause fear in the opposition parties and thwart the efforts of the people of the state to choose better candidate from other political parties”.
