Ekiti: Fayemi Sends ‘Appealing’ Message To Governor Fayose

Dr Fayemi Urges Governor Ayo Fayose To Pay Workers’ Salaries And Pensioners’ Allowances

Ekiti state governor-elect, Kayode Fayemi has appealed to the outgoing Ekiti state Ayo Fayose to make use of the N5.5 billion that he received from the Federation Account to pay workers’ salaries and pensioners’ entitlements.

The former minister who made this call on Sunday, July 22 urged Fayose to use the N34.5 billion Internally Generated Revenue cash that had accrued to the state since October 2014 allegedly kept in a secret account with a bank for the benefit of the people.

The governor-elect made this known in a statement by the director of media and publicity of his media office, Wole Olujobi.

He urged Fayose to be open and transparent to the workers on the June allocation rather than summoning meetings with labour leaders to deceive them on the state of finance.

Going further, Fayemi said the usual practice by the governor to collect federal allocations and call stakeholders meetings to deceive Ekiti people on the sharing formula between the state and local governments is no longer acceptable.

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The statement read: “Information available to us suggests that Fayose at the weekend called all the Directors in the state service to a meeting in the new Governor’s Lodge, pleading with them not to release sensitive information to the opposition, including non-disclosure of the state’s finances.

“But we want to say that the state has received N5.52b fresh June federal allocation and we demand that the money be spent to pay salary, and should not be subjected to the circus of lies and deceits that often accompanied the sharing of the allocations in the past whereby local governments were given their shares in the morning and in the night they would be coerced to return the money to the governor’s office while local governments workers remained unpaid fornine months.

“Fresh reports on the status of the state’s internally generated revenue (IGR) have indicated that between October 16, 2014 to date, the state has a revenue profile of N34,560,000,000 kept in secret accounts in one old generation bank account and another new generation bank account, yet there is nothing to suggest that the money was spent for the benefit of Ekiti people.

“This revenue profile in the two banks is outside the traffic and environmental offences fines and charges reportedly kept in accounts unknown to the state’s accounting and financial system at an old generation bank at Ijigbo area of the state capital.”

“At the state Water Corporation where opaque financial management has left the system in ruins, Ondo state had paid its counterpart fund of N40m for the upgrading of Egbe Dam, but Ekiti State Government has refused to honour its obligation to the project, even as the money paid by Ondo State cannot be traced to any government’s account.

“At Ero Dam, despite releasing N1b on paper out of N1.4b budgeted for the dam’s expansion, there is no sign of work going on there as we speak while in the same Water Corporation, two multi-million naira serviceable trucks were taken to Afao-Ekiti country home of the governor several months ago under pretext that they were being taken there for repairs and up till now, the trucks are still not in the service of the Water Corporation.

“This followed the same pattern whereby the state lost five unserviceable vehicles at the State Sports Council to new owners without any public bidding and auctioning to take possession of the vehicles. “For instance, reports indicated that three Toyota Hiace buses, one 504 Peugeot and one Nissan 120Y had disappeared from the premises of the corporation on the alleged order of the governor.

“This is besides illegal auctioning of several government’s vehicles at ridiculous prices to cronies, who later assembled the same vehicles at a motor showroom in Ibadan for resale to the public.”

Meanwhile, in an earlier report, NIGERIA NEWS reported that Senate President Bukola Saraki spoke on the alleged offer from President Buhari’s administration to prevent him from defeacting to anothe political party.