The Ekiti State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has told
the state Governor, Ayodele Fayose, that it would have his days in the
courts over fabricated figures on the state’s debts to deceive the
people and paint former Governor, Kayode Fayemi, in bad light.
Reacting
to the claims by Fayose’s media aide, Lere Olayinka, that Fayemi
plunged the state into debts without any commensurate development
projects to show for it, the party’s Publicity Secretary, Taiwo
Olatunbosun, said in a statement that it was only the blind that would
not see various development projects executed by the former governor.
“Fayemi
did not borrow to pay salary. He received awards from many
international bodies, including the United Nations’ agency and top
Nigerians, for the feats he recorded in development projects, the last
being the award for the state that led in budget transparency among
other states in Nigeria that Fayose tried to usurp.
“Fayose lied that
Fayemi at a point, collected N9 billion as monthly federal allocation.
The records are there that the state monthly share of federal allocation
remained N2.8 billion throughout and the biggest being N3.2 billion
when excess crude oil fund was shared among the states.
“The former
governor owed one month salary, and that was September 2014, and this
was as a result of Fayose as governor-elect writing the banks not to
honour Fayemi’s credit facility to pay workers salary and pay the banks
back after receiving the allocation for the month in question,”
Olatunbosun explained.
He added: “Fayemi paid N2.2 billion monthly for salaries, pensions and subventions to higher institutions throughout his tenure.
“With
thousands of workers losing their jobs and many social services
suspended, including stoppage of social security stipends to the elderly
when Fayose became the governor, monthly wage bill has reduced to less
than N2billion contrary to N2.6billion that Fayose is claiming as the
monthly wage bill.”
He challenged the governor to produce the
official debt figure of the State that is different from N18billion that
the Debts Management Office declared was the state’s debt, saying
Fayose was lying by quoting N232billion.
“Fayose is a pathological
liar by his claim that the state debt is 232.9billion to be paid back in
21 years. The Federal Ministry of Finance published the state
allocations in the newspapers few days ago with the state receiving
N1.9billion but Fayose declared that he received N1.3billion.
“This
is a man who has introduced all manner of taxes that he can’t account
for, yet he comes everyday declaring that the state is broke.
“We
hereby issue him a deadline of seven days to render accounts of all
monies he has received since he assumed office, including various taxes
he imposed on the people.
“The civil servants who he owed three
months salaries and allowances as well as Ekiti people generally deserve
to know how their money is being spent.”
Failure to do this will
compel APC to mobilise civil society groups and all men of good
conscience to press for the investigation and prosecution of Fayose who
has made lying his official government policy,” Olatunbosun concluded.