Matawalle’s phantom N2.9bn Ramadan gifts

 
To start with, among the contemporary crop of politicians in Nigeria, if there’s anyone to whom God has shown his ultimate supremacy, that person is the incumbent governor of Zamfara state, Muhammed Bello Matawalle.
It was not a surprise for any political observer that Matawalle, whose political experience is nothing to write home about or get anyone jittery, emerged the governor of Zamfara state. This is more so considering the big shots in Zamfara political landscape aspiring to be governor on the platforms of the various parties, particularly, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Matawalle’s party. It was a miracle, indeed.


Zamfara state paraded an array of gubernatorial hopefuls from the two major parties – political juggernauts with vast experience, financial war chest and huge constituencies. Despite these political clouts necessary to win an election, Matawalle, who was just an ordinary member of the House of Representatives, emerged the governor. This was a manifestation of the power of God. And it should have been sufficient reason for the evidently politically feeble Matawalle to, besides intensifying his faith in God, be humble and do the right thing. Instead, the “accidental” governor has been very deceitful to the disenchantment of God’s conscious people of the state and belittlement of his faith.


In fact, on one side of his weak political base, Matawalle’s PDP is also ostensibly fragile in Zamfara state. The party, in spite having a serving governor, has obviously failed to consolidate its fortune to win the hearts of the majority of the people of the state.
No wonder, Matawalle is always laughably mulling to quit his party. Matawalle has apparently forgotten that it was God who made him the governor of the state through a mysterious court judgement rather than through the ballot. Sadly, the same man favoured by God, is now trying to be Machiavellian.
As if this is not enough, while I was trying to digest and comprehend fully Matawalle’s dead on arrival idea of defecting to the APC where a chicken will surely come home to roost should he take this decision, one more deceitful scheming arose. 


In his attempt to compare himself with the former governor of the state, Abdul’Aziz Yari, who recently distributed 130 trucks of food items to the people in the state in the spirit of fasting, Matawalle, through his media aides, came up with a phantom N2.9 billion Ramadan gifts to the people of Zamfara state. This claim, certainly, cannot be reconciled even by great mathematicians like Pythagoras of Samos, Hypatia Theon, Girolamo Cardano, Leonhard Euler, etc. 


Ordinarily, the gesture would have been commendable. But looking at the distribution, the money allegedly spent, market prices of the items listed, one wonders what Matawalle wants to achieve by trying to play with God who made him a governor by deceiving not only the people of Zamfara state whose trust was given to him but the entire Muslim Ummah and the poor in the holy month of Ramadan.


Yari’s gesture was visibly seen by all as trailer-loads of food items were evidently parked on the day of the distribution. On the contrary, Matawalle’s N2.9 billion items and purported 450 trucks were not seen anywhere in the state except a few number. A quick check revealed that the market prices of items listed at the lowest cost amounted to about N4.8 billion against the hyped N2.9 billion. This implies that someone sat in his comfort zone to carelessly cook up the figures without due diligence to the market prices of the items. What a charade!
Let’s do a simple arithmetic. The lowest price of a bag of rice local and foreign in the market is N20,000; multiplied by 60, 000 bags, the total cost is N1.2 billion. 50,000 bags of maize and millet at N20,000 each will cost N2 billion, respectively. The market price of a bag of beans is N40, 000; multiplied by Matawalle’s 30,000 bags is N1.2 billion; 10,000 bags of sugar at N20,000 cost N2 billion. For the 40,000 assorted materials and wrappers, let’s assume they will go for a price of N5,000 per 5 yards which will total N200,000.
The total cost of all the items is N4.8 billion against Matawalle’s N2.9 billion.
It is forbidden for a Muslim to lie, especially in the month of Ramadan which is a window of opportunity for people with such appeal to repent and denounce all sorts of wrong doings for him or her to attain piety as prescribed in the Holy Qur’an. Unless this is mathematically proven otherwise or the glaring discrepancies are addressed, the claims of Matawalle are confabulation and imaginary aimed to bamboozle the gullible people of Zamfara state with their own resources.Suleiman writes from Gusau, Zamfara state.

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