By Our Correspondent <\/p>\n
Palpable fear of arrest and detention may have gripped Minister of State, Defence, Alhaji Bello Matawalle as a result of fresh controversy, which may spiral into a major scandal as a viral video released by the United States lawmaker, Kimberly Daniels has alleged that the minister attempted to bribe a U.S. official to change the report indicting him of complicity in Nigeria\u2019s worsening insecurity.<\/p>\n
In a statement, which has sent shockwaves across government circles in Abuja, Kimberly Daniels, who is the Chairwoman of the United World Congress of Diplomats (UN-WCD), claimed that Matawalle offered money to an elected U.S. official to help him stop the pressure on the Federal Government to remove or redeploy him from the Ministry of Defence. <\/p>\n
Congress woman Daniels said the bribe was also intended to suppress a UN-WCD report, which focused on the ongoing genocide against Christians in Nigeria.
\nThe report allegedly identified \u201cred flags\u201d and linked Matawalle to bandit groups during his tenure as Governor of Zamfara State. Civil society groups have defended the US Congress women’s report and have urged the government to implement the recommendations.<\/p>\n
The Middle Belt, expecially Plateau, Kaduna, Kwara and Benue states have suffered several bandit and terrorist attacks and the devastating surge in violence in the region has resulted in the loss of hundreds of lives, including brutal massacres that were described as systematic religious cleansing.<\/p>\n
The UN-WCD report argued that there is \u201ctroubling disconnect\u201d between the Federal Government\u2019s official statements and the reality on the ground, and she asserted that the attacks are \u201callegedly protected by leadership from the inside.\u201d
\nThe Presidency has not made a clear statement on the calls for Matawalle\u2019s sack or his redeloyment since it started early this year but the controversy will likely not disappear from the public radar anytime soon especially as bandit and terrorist attacks continue in the north east, northwest and the middlebelt regions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Our Correspondent Palpable fear of arrest and detention may have gripped Minister of State, Defence, Alhaji Bello Matawalle as a result of fresh controversy, which may spiral into a major scandal as a viral video released by the United States lawmaker, Kimberly Daniels has alleged that the minister attempted to bribe a U.S. official […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[4317,6449,251,2830],"class_list":["post-12928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law-crime","tag-complicity","tag-indicting","tag-insecurity","tag-worsening"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12928"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12929,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12928\/revisions\/12929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}