APC accuses Fayose of awarding self N720m salary arrears

Ayo Fayose

The All Progressives Congress in Ekiti State has accused Governor Ayodele Fayose of awarding N720 million to himself as the arrears of his unfinished first term.

The governor was impeached on October 16, 2006 by the then Ekiti State House of Assembly.

But the Supreme Court in a recent judgment said the impeachment was null and void because due process was not followed.

The state APC Publicity Secretary, Taiwo Olatubosun, in a statement on Thursday said it was “selfish and callous” for the governor to pay himself arrears for unfinished term when he had yet to pay workers and poor pensioners in the state.

The party said it was equally “shameful and heartless” for the governor to refuse to pay statutory  pensions benefit to Ekiti elders which is not more than N5,000 for many of them, after serving the state meritoriously.

It added that the government had also cancelled the N5,000 social security scheme paid to 20,000 elderly Ekiti people by former Governor Kayode Fayemi’s administration.

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The party also accused the governor of refusal to pay traditional rulers for five months while also refusing to pay gratuity to retired workers since he assumed office, wondering who exactly the governor’s friends were with his anti-people policies.

Olatubosun said the purported 1,000 ghost workers whom the governor said he discovered during his latest staff auditing was a fraud, explaining that it was a ploy to sack workers whose termination of appointment letters were being compiled for mass sack “and we wonder when ghosts started receiving letters.”

Reacting to the allegations, Fayose, in a statement by his Chief Press Secretary, Idowu Adelusi, said it was “simply falsehood promoted to the most ridiculous level.”

The statement said, “Governor Fayose left office on October 16, 2006, eight months to the end of his tenure and Ekiti State has had three governors since then. Does it then make any sense that the same Fayose would come back eight years after to approve payment already made to three governors after him for himself?

“Let’s even assume that the eight months salary is to be paid, is the monthly salary of a governor more than N1m? How then does N1m per month equal N720m in eight months?”