I Didn’t Appoint Hadejia As A Special Adviser, Letter Was Forged – Gov Lawal

Zamfara State Governor, Dauda Lawal, has said he did not appoint suspected terrorist, Bashir Hadejia, as a special adviser.

Dauda Lawal said the letter of appointment was forged and did not emanate from him or any member of his government.

Naija News reported that Bashir Hadejia was arrested on Monday last week over alleged gun-running.

The suspect was a special adviser to the current Minister of State for Defence, Bello Matawalle, when he was the Governor of Zamfara State.

After his arrest, a letter of his appointment, dated October 27, 2023, signed by the Secretary to the Zamfara State Government, Mal Abubakar M. Nakwada, trended online, particularly X platform.

Speaking on Channels TV on Wednesday, Governor Lawal said, “Let me make a categorical statement here. I did not appoint Hadejia as a Special Adviser.

“If you look at the letter heading itself with the date, something is fishy somewhere. We issued statement that we had nothing to do with that, that was a forged letter.

“Whenever I appoint advisers, I usually tell the media that I have appointed X, Y, Z in different positions. I challenge anybody to show me where we made that kind of statement.”

Speaking on the state of insecurity in the state, Lawal said the state government is collaborating with the federal government to ensure an end to banditry. He added that his administration is winning the war against bandits.

“The issue of insecurity is something that we inherited for over a decade and it is not something that we are going to solve overnight.

“However, we are making conscious efforts to make sure we face these security challenges head-on. It is part of the reason why we set up the Community Protection Guards last year. I will say that it has gone down drastically, quite a number of people can now go back to their farms.

“What we are doing with the CPG in conjunction with other conventional security (agencies) is to make sure that people are able to harvest their farm inputs,” Lawal said.