{"id":80280,"date":"2025-12-15T08:13:58","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T08:13:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=80280"},"modified":"2025-12-15T08:13:58","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T08:13:58","slug":"zamfara-apc-alleges-plot-to-smear-matawalle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2025\/12\/15\/zamfara-apc-alleges-plot-to-smear-matawalle\/","title":{"rendered":"Zamfara APC Alleges Plot to Smear Matawalle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Olokuta Rofiat<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Zamfara State chapter of the APC has accused the state government under Governor Dauda Lawal of running a campaign to falsely link Minister of State for Defence, Bello Matawalle, to banditry and insecurity in the North.<\/p>\n<p>In a statement on Sunday, APC spokesman Yusuf Idris Gusau said the alleged plot aims to pressure President Bola Ahmed Tinubu into removing Matawalle from office.<\/p>\n<p>The party noted that Matawalle and bandit leader Bello Turji have repeatedly denied any connection.<\/p>\n<p>The APC claimed that public funds were being used to mobilise individuals, including religious leaders and hired protesters, across northern and southern Nigeria to spread the allegations.<\/p>\n<p>Describing the claims as politically motivated and baseless, the party warned that such actions could distract security agencies and hinder efforts to tackle banditry.<\/p>\n<p>It urged security agencies to investigate the alleged smear campaign and called on the public to ignore unverified claims while focusing on restoring peace in the region.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Olokuta Rofiat The Zamfara State chapter of the APC has accused the state government under Governor Dauda Lawal of running a campaign to falsely link Minister of State for Defence, Bello Matawalle, to banditry and insecurity in the North. In a statement on Sunday, APC spokesman Yusuf Idris Gusau said the alleged plot aims [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":80281,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172,186],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80280"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80282,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80280\/revisions\/80282"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}