Gov Lawal faces backlash for seeking dialogue with Zamfara bandits

Zamfara State Governor, Dauda Lawal, is facing public backlash over his move to seek dialogue and reconciliation with bandit groups terrorising the North-West State. Representatives of the Zamfara and Katsina states recently held a meeting with wanted bandit leaders in a bid to negotiate a peace deal. The well-publicised meeting has triggered controversy as critics condemned the move as a show of weakness by the government. Reacting to the development, the Northern Security and Integrity Forum (NSIF) lambasted Governor Lawal, describing the move as a “shameful U-turn” in handling the state’s decade-long banditry crisis. The group recalled how the Governor criticised a similar move by his predecessor and current Minister of State for Defence, Bello Matawalle. It said the reconciliation move with known armed groups confirms that the much-criticised strategy of Matawalle was, in fact, visionary, pragmatic, and morally justifiable. This is contained in a statement signed by NSIF national president, Dr. Sulaiman Ali Mustapha, in Gusau, Zamfara’s capital, on Friday, June 20, 2025. Group accuses Governor Lawal of costly grandstanding Mustapha accused Lawal of hypocrisy and political grandstanding, which he said have cost thousands of lives in Zamfara and neighbouring states. “Governor Dauda Lawal has now become the living embodiment of the phrase: ‘politics over lives.’ For years, he demonised former Governor Bello Matawalle’s approach to banditry, portraying it as weak, immoral, and counterproductive,” the statement reads. “Yet today, after more than 20,000 civilians and over 500 security personnel have been killed according to Amnesty International and other credible conflict monitoring bodies, Dauda Lawal is now doing exactly what he once ridiculed — sitting down with the attackers and preaching dialogue.” NSIF further contended that the images and footage of wanted bandit leaders being received at peace meetings hosted in Katsina and Zamfara, particularly the controversial appearance of Ado Aleru, were a “slap in the face of every Nigerian whose life was shattered by terrorism.” “These meetings are not acts of peace — they are acts of surrender. It shows Dauda Lawal is out of ideas, overwhelmed, and returning shamefully to a method he publicly mocked. He owes the people of Zamfara and Nigeria a deep apology — not a press conference, not another meeting — but a national apology for misleading the public and jeopardising lives through his arrogance,” the group noted. Group calls Matawalle a visionary leader While describing Matawalle as “a man ahead of his time,” the forum argued that the current Zamfara administration’s quiet embrace of his controversial strategy vindicates his tenure. “It is now obvious that Bello Matawalle deserves not just vindication but canonization. He pursued peace in the face of criticism, he engaged with facts rather than cheap political populism, and he held the line when others were shouting for war without a plan,” the statement reads. The group further alleged that Governor Lawal has no strategic framework for addressing insecurity in Zamfara beyond what it called “media optics”. “Under Lawal, banditry has worsened, abductions have surged, and communities continue to be sacked while the government holds press briefings. Now that he is crawling back to the same ‘carrot-and-stick’ method he once discredited, we must ask: who is fooling who?” NSIF described Lawal’s latest move as a “belated peace approach,” stressing that it corroborated the previous administration’s stance that combat operations alone cannot end the insurgency.