APC berates Fayose for ‘paying himself N720m arrears as Governor’

Ekiti State chapter of the All Progressives Congress, APC, has accused the state Governor, Mr. Ayodele Fayose, of paying himself N720million as arrears of his unfinished first term in office as the governor, describing the act as satanic in the face of the hardship being witnessed by workers.

Fayose, had reigned as governor from May 29, 2003 but got impeached on October 16, 2006, six months to the expiration of his first term.

The party in a statement issued yesterday by its Publicity Secretary, Taiwo Olatubosun, noted that it is shameful and heartless for the governor to refuse paying statutory pension benefits to Ekiti elders not exceeding N5,000 for many of them, who meritoriously served the state.

It also castigated Fayose for cancelling his predecessor, Kayode Fayemi’s social security scheme that paid N5,000 monthly to 20,000 elderly Ekiti people, alleging that many of the pensioners who have no children to take care of them have started dying.

The Ekiti APC which further vented its anger accused the state governor of refusing to pay traditional rulers five months salaries, while also refusing to pay gratuity to a single retired worker since he assumed office, wondering who exactly the governor’s friends are with his anti-people policies.”

It continued that Fayose had last week electronically paid N13million into the accounts of each of the 16 local governments and collected the cash back from the council chairmen for purported joint projects like he did in his fraudulent poultry project in 2004.

According to Olatubosun, “We are asking Fayose once again what he is doing with all the monies he saved from the empowerment programmes he cancelled. We also want to know where election contract deductions of N650 million monthly are going? Who are the beneficiaries? Are they more important than Ekiti workers?”

He maintained that 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.

“His claim that 250 workers died after Fayemi left office is baffling. If this were so, then all Nigerian pastors must relocate to Ekiti to intercede on behalf of Ekiti workers to stop mass deaths in the civil service,” he said

But reacting swiftly in a statement issued by his Chief Press Secretary, Idowu Adelusi, the governor refuted the allegation, noting that, “From all indications, the APC has promoted falsehood to the level of a trade, and we pity the party and its lying leaders. Governor Fayose left office on October 16, 2006, eight months to the end of his tenure and Ekiti State had three governors within that period.

“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 N1million? How then does say N1million per month equaled N720million in eight months?

“Again, severance allowance is 300 per cent of annual basic salary and the basic salary of a governor is not more than N2million. So can N2million in three places be equal to N720million?”