Bello Matawalle: a symbol of betrayal and repercussions
Fortune smiled at Mr. Bello Matawalle when he was declared governor on 24 May, 2019. All hope seemed to have lost and all of a sudden, things changed and he moved from a state of hopelessness to the coveted seat of Zamfara State governor.
He was the flag bearer of the PDP during the 2019 governorship election. Unfortunately, he couldn’t surmount courage to defeat the popular All Progressives Congress and its candidate, Mukhtar Idris, who polled up to half a million votes.
In that election, Bello Matawalle scored just slightly over 189,000 votes. He couldn’t even decide to approach the Court for litigation because the margin was exceedingly wide.
However, there were wranglings in the APC over the conduct of the primary election. There were two factions: one being led by the then Governor Abdulaziz Yari and the other under control of Senator Kabir Marafa. The two sides were at loggerheads over the leadership of the party.
Yari produced the governorship candidate, but the other faction isn’t pleased with the outcome of the primary election. Hence, it approached the court. The Supreme Court put the matter to rest when it declared that the APC didn’t have any gubernatorial candidate.
As a result of that, Bello Matawalle moved from the second position to the Zamfara State Government Secretariat, Gusau. The PDP candidate became the winner of the election. He was simply lucky.
But the incumbent governor, Bello Matawalle, later went on to betray the People’s Democratic Party, which stood by him through thick and thin. He jilted the political party by embracing the crisis ridden All Progressives Congress.
In June, 2021, the governor announced his departure from the PDP to the APC. The former made fruitless attempts to block him from decamping. But he was determined. He dumped the PDP to the chagrin of the political party.
The internal issues that bedeviled the All Progressives Congress were still there when Matawalle defected. In fact, he compounded the issue when he became the leader. Yari wouldn’t agree.
The PDP picked itself up from the disappointment and sheer betrayal. The party started preparing for the 2023 general elections. It picked Mr. Dauda Lawal Dare as its candidate to face the incumbent, Bello Matawalle.
Matawalle might have thought that the All Progressives Congress was far more popular in Zamfara State than the PDP. The results of the 2019 gubernatorial election might have swayed his mind. And that’s his albatross.
Mr. Dare scored 377,726 votes to beat the incumbent, Bello Matawalle, who had 311,976. He has become one of the governors who wouldn’t enjoy two uninterrupted terms in the country.
Rather than help to strengthen the PDP in the state and prepare the party to wade off the challenges of the APC, Mr. Bello Matawalle would rather join the APC. He preferred to dump the “unpopular” PDP for the viable APC. That’s betrayal.
The outcome of the governorship election, which the Independent National Electoral Commission has declared, is the repercussion of his treachery.
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