Security Votes Fueling Your Desperation to Govern Nasarawa, Gov Tells Maku

Igbawase Ukumba in Lafia

The governor of Nasarawa State, Mr. Abdullahi Sule, yesterday alleged that the sole motive the former Minister of Information, Mr. Labaran Maku, is seeking to govern the state is to be collecting security vote and nothing more.

Maku, a 2019 APGA governorship candidate in the state, had accused Governor Sule of collecting N300 million as monthly security votes, which is about N3.6 billion a year, still people are being killed and farmers can’t go to their farms in Nasarawa State.

Sule, who spoke through his Senior Special Assistant (SSA) on Project Monitoring and Evaluation, Dr. Kassim Muhammad Kassim, expressed disappointment over the comment made by Maku that he (Sule) has been receiving over N300 million monthly as security votes without any justification for it.

He said: “Maku’s allegations has exposed his emptiness before the public and people of the state that his only reasons for seeking to govern the state is to collect security votes and nothing more.

“People like Maku are still living in the era when security votes were the property of a governor. It is unfortunate that he is still ignorant.

“In Nasarawa State, security vote doesn’t even get to the governor in bulk. The SSG’s office collects and shares the money to all the security agencies. It is disappointing that Maku wants to be a governor because of security votes, but he will be shocked if he will ever be a governor because the system has been sanitised,” the governor maintained.

He, however, described Maku as a serial governorship aspirant who is seeking blind attention and has never seen anything good in any administration in the state except the one that he had served as a commissioner and deputy governor respectively.

“It is on records that prior to the coming into office of this administration, there have been security challenges between herders/farmers mostly in the southern zone. The Egbira/Bassa communal crisis in the western zone, which has claimed several lives and destroy properties.

“But this administration has brought permanent peace in these areas and the warring groups have since embraced the peace initiative of our administration.

“Banditry and other criminal activities, which used to be the order of the day in the state is now a thing of the past and massive investments have been attracted into the state, which have taken a lot of youths off the street,” Sule maintained.

He, therefore, advised electorates in the state to reject the former information minister during the 2023 governorship election, as “Maku’s desperate ambition to govern Nasarawa State is for his selfish interest.”