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
