Particular adviser on Info and Technique to President Bola Tinubu, Bayo Onanuga, has revealed why the minister of state for Defence, Bello Matawalle was not dismissed within the current cupboard reshuffle.
Matawalle, the previous governor of Zamfara State, has confronted accusations of getting hyperlinks to bandit {groups}.
Nonetheless, Onanuga clarified that the allegations have been completely investigated by the Workplace of the National Security Adviser (NSA) and located to be baseless.
Talking throughout an interview on Come up TV, Onanuga said: “So far as I do know, most of these issues are simply mere allegations.
In one in every of them, I obtained one thing like that and despatched it to the NSA and requested: ‘Have you ever heard about this?’ The NSA mentioned: ‘No. We have now probed lots of these issues; they aren’t true.’”
He continued: “Individuals are simply bringing out all types of faux issues and allegations. That’s the reason the person (Matawalle) continues to be within the cupboard. The president, I’m certain, has heard many tales about him. For him to be there reveals that, like I’ve mentioned, a few of these issues have been probed. They’ve been discovered to not be true.”
In line with Onanuga, the NSA’s investigation concluded that the allegations towards Matawalle have been “mere fabrications.”
Onanuga additionally supplied insights into the rationale behind the reshuffle, explaining that public notion performed an important function.
He credited Hadiza Bala Usman, Particular Adviser to the President on Coverage and Coordination, for implementing a system that allowed Nigerians to evaluate the ministers’ performances.
“It wasn’t executed arbitrarily,” Onanuga mentioned. “Hadiza Bala Usman introduced in know-how, asking Nigerians to price the ministers.
So, the removing of those ministers was based mostly on empirical info, formed by the general public’s notion. The scorecards have been crammed out by the folks, and the President acted on these outcomes.”
He added that the reshuffle was not solely about assembly the President’s expectations but in addition addressing the issues of the general public. “Just a few weeks in the past, throughout a cupboard assembly, the President urged the ministers to tell Nigerians of their accomplishments, as a result of, in line with him, there was a public notion that the federal government wasn’t performing,” he mentioned.
Onanuga additionally hinted at upcoming efforts to scale back the price of governance. “The President will quickly announce measures to scale back authorities expenditure, beginning with the ministers. I don’t need to pre-empt the main points, however the cuts shall be vital to reveal the federal government’s seriousness in decreasing the price of governance.”
He concluded by stating: “The federal government is conscious of what’s required to deal with the nation’s challenges. It’s not concerning the measurement of the federal government, however about having many competent palms to drive its agenda.”
