Zamfara: PDP Assembly Candidate Kurya Defects to APC, Cites Security Failures Under Gov Lawal

In a significant political shift in Zamfara State, Hon. Muhammad Lawal Kuryar Madaro, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate who woefully lost the Kaura Namoda South State House of Assembly election, has defected to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

The move was announced today at a high-profile gathering organised by Hon. Yazeed Shehu Danfulani Projects at the Taula Arena in Gusau.

The defection comes just months after the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared APC’s Kamilu Sa’idu the victor in the August supplementary election for the Kaura Namoda South constituency.

Returning Officer Lawal Sa’adu from the Federal University Gusau confirmed Sa’idu’s triumph, with the APC candidate securing 1,181 votes against Kurya’s 194 in the runoff.

Overall, across the constituency, the APC amassed 8,182 votes to the PDP’s 5,544, highlighting the APC’s strong grip despite the high-stakes contest reportedly backed by a multi-billion naira war chest from PDP Governor Dauda Lawal.

Kurya was reportedly sponsored with billions at the last election by Governor Dauda Lawal, yet faced rejection over the governor’s failures.

Having switched to the APC, he expressed disillusionment with his former party’s direction and the leadership of Governor Lawal.

He lambasted the Lawal administration for losing focus, particularly on security, which he blamed for his electoral defeat and the broader instability plaguing Zamfara.

However, he urged his followers to unite behind APC leader Dr. Bello Matawalle, the Minister of State for Defence, in efforts to restore peace and progress.

The timing of Kurya’s switch could signal further defections in Zamfara’s polarised political landscape, where banditry and inter-party rivalries continue to dominate.

Zamfara State records N358.9 billion revenue in 2024

The Zamfara State Government has announced a total revenue generation of N358.9 billion for the 2024 fiscal year, representing 82 percent performance of its approved revenue target of N437 billion.

The disclosure was made by the State Auditor-General, Abubakar Danmaliki, on Thursday in Gusau, during the official presentation of the state’s 2024 Citizens Accountability Report.

Danmaliki explained that the revenue performance reflected steady improvement in the state’s Value Added Tax (VAT), Internally Generated Revenue (IGR), and federal statutory allocations, alongside aids and grants from development partners.

Earlier, the Commissioner of Finance, Bello Auta said that the report’s presentation was the maiden edition.

He disclosed that nominated projects by citizens amounted to N105 billion, adding that the projects were properly executed and completed across the state, including those nominated by GESI (Gender Equity and Social Inclusion).

Auta noted that before the present administration in the state, Zamfara grappled with non-retirement of advances; IGR spent at source when generated and improper payment documentations.

“The aggregate revenue performance for the year was 82 per cent of the budgeted N437 billion amounting to N358.9 billion for the year,” the commissioner explained.

He noted that the revenue received was below the budget by 18 per cent and stood at N79 billion.

“The capital expenditure had a 55 per cent performance rate of the Budget of N292 billion, while the recurrent expenditure for personnel for the year was below the budget by 16 per cent,” he added.

According to him, the other recurrent expenditure was within the limit at 63 per cent respectively.

Administrative sector expended highest revenue

Auta further said that the administrative sector expended the highest proportion of recurrent expenditure, representing 74 per cent.

“While the economic sector expended the highest proportion of capital expenditure at 41 per cent in the year.

“The top 10 value projects of the state for year ended Dec. 31, 2024, being the second year of the present administration are nearing completion”, he further said.

In his remarks, Governor Dauda Lawal represented by the state Head of Service, Alhaji Yakubu Haidara, said the event was in line with his administration’s commitment to transparency, accountability and citizen participation in governance.

The governor noted that the issue of governance was not a closed-door affair but a collective responsibility, where people must feel the impact of government policies and understand how public funds are being utilised.

“As we all know, the citizens accountability and financial report provide a transparent summary of how the state’s resources are mobilised and spent to deliver services and infrastructure to the residents.

“I want to assure the good people of Zamfara that my administration will continue to keep the residents informed about the financial commitments, performance and utilisation of public funds,” Lawal said.

What you should know

In the latest data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Nigeria’s 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) generated a combined N3.63 trillion in Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) in 2024.

The data showed that Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) across Nigeria’s 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) rose to a cumulative N10.88 trillion between 2021 and 2024.

History as a Binding Glue: How Nigeria’s Collective Memory Can Hold Us Together.

By George Omagbemi Sylvester | Published by saharaweeklyng.com

Remember the cost our past paid for the freedoms we squabble over today.

Nigeria’s past is not an optional footnote. It is the adhesive that can bind a fractured nation, the story of a people who fought COLONIAL MASTERS, survived a devastating CIVIL WAR and refused to let authoritarian theft of the BALLOT STAND. Those episodes are not simply chapters of grievance; they are testimonies of sacrifice, resilience and prices paid in blood and dignity. If we tell those stories honestly (with the scale of suffering and the faces of those who resisted in full view) we can turn memory into moral capital and common purpose.

On October 1, 1960, Nigeria formally emerged from British colonial rule into an uncertain independence, a moment of euphoria that masked deep regional and structural fault lines. Independence was the fruit of decades of organized struggles by nationalists (Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo, Ahmadu Bello and COUNTLESS UNSUNG PATRIOTS who worked in political parties, unions, churches, mosques and market squares) insisting that Nigerians be masters of their fate. That victory was not inevitable. It was won by organizing, argument and sacrifice. Remembering the public courage that produced independence anchors us, it reminds citizens that rights were claimed, not gifted and that vigilance is required to keep them.

Yet INDEPENDENCE did not INOCULATE Nigeria against the CENTRIFUGAL forces of ethnicity, economic inequality and political exclusion. Those tensions birthed the Nigerian Civil War from 1967 to 1970 a conflict that left an indelible moral scar on the NATION. The human cost was immense, scholars and modern historians estimate civilian and military deaths ranging from hundreds of thousands to several million, with famine and displacement devastating entire communities. The war’s memory is not merely a record of loss; it is a stern lesson about what happens when the state fails to forge inclusive political institutions and when political disputes are resolved by force instead of dialogue. To ignore that lesson is to court a repetition of the catastrophe.

Memory becomes moral only when it names names not to perpetuate vendettas, but to catalogue the forces that undermined our shared life. The stories of ordinary Nigerians who fed the starving, sheltered the displaced and resisted abuses should be made central in schoolrooms, memorials and public ceremonies. Commemoration should not be a STATE-MANAGED spectacle that airbrushes inconvenient truths; it must be a living archive that teaches future citizens how and why freedoms were won and how easily they may be lost. When history is taught as a series of human choices instead of a parade of anonymous disasters, we sharpen the civic instincts necessary for democracy.

The appeal of shared memory is not sentimental; it is strategic. June 12, 1993 (the day of what many historians call Nigeria’s freest and fairest election) is a prime example. The annulment of that election and the subsequent suffering of its presumed winner, Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale (MKO) Abiola, galvanized a nation and produced a generation of activists who would not accept democratic theft. That collective insistence on the sanctity of the ballot ultimately became one of the reference points for modern Nigerian democratic theology. Honoring June 12 and teaching why the people rose, cements a civic ethic that prizes electoral legitimacy over personalist power.

Though memory only binds, if it is told with moral clarity rather than partisan rancour. Our public narratives too often collapse into two traps; either they MYTHOLOGIZE leaders while excusing historical sins or they WEAPONIZE history into perpetual grievance that paralyses constructive engagement. Instead, Nigeria needs memory that is capacious enough to embrace both sacrifice and critical appraisal; to praise courage where it existed and to call out failures of leadership that betrayed the public trust.

Literature and public intellectuals have long urged such a balanced approach. Wole Soyinka, a living repository of Nigeria’s conscience, has warned against trivialising the struggles that birthed democratic claims; he insists that those who reduce these sacrifices to personal ambition are the “REAL ENEMIES” of democratic progress. That is a clarion call, memory must be reverent without being worshipful, forensic without being vindictive.

The mechanics of turning memory into glue are practical and urgent. First: education. Civic curricula must foreground the independence movement, the causes and human cost of the civil war and the democratic struggles of 1993, not as distant trivia but as foundational civic literacy. Second: public commemoration should include museums, oral-history projects and community memorials that center ordinary citizens testimonies, market women, soldiers mothers, teachers and the imprisoned. Thirdly, the media and arts should be incentivized to dramatize and interrogate these histories rather than sensationalize them. When children see a classroom play about a community that rescued refugees during the war, they learn empathy and responsibility in ways that abstract lectures cannot deliver.

There is also a political duty. Leaders must refuse the cynical erasure of history for political expediency. They should sponsor TRUTH-SEEKING and RECONCILIATION where necessary, fund the preservation of archives and create public spaces that facilitate honest national dialogue. When governments act as historians by omission (suppressing uncomfortable records, rewarding amnesia) they fracture the social compact that history is meant to preserve.

Memory’s binding force also demands civic rituals that are nonpartisan. National holidays and commemorations should be infused with real substance: testimonies, public hearings and the awarding of civic honors to unsung heroes. When citizens see that sacrifices made by previous generations are publicly acknowledged, they are likelier to invest in the common good. Conversely, when memory is monopolized as a partisan trophy, it loses legitimacy and slips into polarising myth.

Finally, the moral energy drawn from shared history must be converted into accountability. The memory of those who suffered should demand better governance today and transparent institutions, a justice system that works and economic policies that reduce inequality. To venerate past sacrifice while tolerating present rot is moral hypocrisy; history binds only when it creates obligations in the present.

Nigeria’s story (independence wrested from empire, a civil war that almost dissolved the nation and democratic struggles that risked and sometimes lost lives) gives us a profound choice. We can let those stories be trophies for factional VIRTUE-SIGNALING or we can make them the mortar for a durable civic architecture. If we choose the latter, history becomes more than memory: it becomes a binding glue; the shared narrative that holds citizens accountable to one another, resists demagogues and demands a politics worthy of the price that previous generations paid.

The past did not deliver us a perfect country. It delivered us a country with an obligation to honor sacrifice with institutions that protect liberty, to honor resilience with policies that expand opportunity and to honor those who fought for democracy with an unflinching commitment to the rule of law. Remembering is not merely retrospective mourning; it is FORWARD-LOOKING resolve. Let us tell the stories properly, teach them widely and act on them fiercely; because the better future we seek must be built on the full truth of where we have been.

– George Omagbemi Sylvester