Former Zamfara governorship candidate, Sani Shinkafi, has called on President Bola Tinubu to immediately dismiss the Minister of State for Defence, Bello Matawalle, and abolish the office entirely.
Shinkafi made the demand while reacting to a resurfaced 2021 Channels TV video in which Matawalle—then Zamfara State governor—appeared to express sympathy for bandits, saying “not all of them are criminals” after a meeting with then-President Muhammadu Buhari at the State House.
In a statement issued on behalf of the Patriots for the Advancement of Peace and Social Development, Shinkafi urged Tinubu to order a full probe into the video, insisting it portrays Matawalle as a bandit sympathiser unfit for his current role.
He said:
“More importantly, the now-viral interview where Bello Matawalle said ‘not all bandits are criminals’ clearly shows he lacks the capacity to confront insecurity. It paints him as someone sympathetic to bandits.”
Shinkafi added that keeping Matawalle in office under the new Minister of Defence, General Christopher Musa—who once served beneath him—could create avoidable tensions.
“General Musa should be given full freedom to reorganise the Defence Ministry without partisan interference. This is not the time for sentiment; Nigeria is in a security emergency,” he said.
The former gubernatorial candidate maintained that Matawalle’s removal is necessary, arguing that his time in office has been “a setback in the fight against terrorism.”
He urged Matawalle to either resign honourably, as former Defence Minister Mohammed Badaru did, or be relieved of his duties in the interest of national security.
Shinkafi also demanded the scrapping of the Minister of State for Defence position, calling it redundant and a distortion of proper military command structure.
According to him, vital responsibilities—such as control of the maritime domain, the Defence Pension Board, and the Defence Industries Corporation of Nigeria—should not be under a junior minister.
“We cannot run two parallel administrations in the Defence Ministry, especially at a time when unified action is needed to tackle insecurity. Security experts agree that the office of Minister of State for Defence has outlived its usefulness. It should be scrapped,” he concluded.
