The All Progressives Congress in Ekiti State has described the first year of Governor Ayodele Fayose’s administration as a developmental vacuum in celebration of fortunes reversal.
The party said all the gains of the government of Engineer Segun Oni and Dr. Kayode Fayemi had been eroded by Fayose’s government, which it described as deceitful and founded on impunity and violence.
The APC Publicity Secretary in the state, Taiwo Olatubosun, said in a statement that the experience of Ekiti State people in the last one year had shown clearly that there was nothing to celebrate in terms of achievements.
Olatubosun said what was not in doubt was a slide to the governor’s inglorious past hallmarked by dubious projects execution, attacks on the opposition and arbitrariness in governance process.
Accusing Fayose of running a one-man government without regard to the law, he cited the new u-nbudgeted airport project that had led to the death of a farmer over shock of felling his economic trees without compensation.
Olatunbosun also alleged that there was no segment of the society that Fayose had not visited with pains and anguish, citing the cancellation of social security N5,000 stipends for the elders in breach of the N10,000 he promised them during campaign.
He added: “Thousands of young men engaged by former Governor Kayode Fayemi in empowerment schemes have lost their jobs, promotions for civil servants and teachers by Fayemi have been cancelled and statutory allowances to civil servants have been reduced while allowances to traditional rulers were cut by forty percent.
“Under Fayose, monthly personal security vote has increased to N250 million, but then Ekiti State has today become the kidnapping capital of the South West in contrast to a crime-free state under Fayemi’s watch.
“Ekiti State has become a public theatre where, like moonlight square, lies are dished out to the people as a comic relief, even as he goes about with frivolity of buying pepper and tomatoes in the open market instead of facing a serious business of governance.
“He chose President Muhammadu Buhari as an object of relentless criticisms, spending millions of naira of Ekiti money to wage a needless battle against the President. Never in the history of the state have we had a bad relationship with the Federal Government on the basis of the governor’s crude and abrasive attitude.”
Noting that Fayose has no single project initiated and completed for commissioning a year after collecting N22 billion refund, N2 billion ecological fund and MDGs N2 billion fund, Olatunbosun also accused the governor of deceiving Ekiti State over its financial status, saying that Fayemi’s latest revelation at the ministerial screening had exposed the governor as an unconscionable liar.
He said: “While consistently quoting N86b as the state’s debts, the truth has been known that the state’s debt is N18b, yet the governor has continued to impose illegal and unbearable taxes on the people while also introducing school fees that have since sent many pupils out of school and uprooting market women from their trading spots,” he said, adding that his recent antic is playing games with the lives of Ekiti workers over manipulation of the bailout fund to personal advantage.
“His knack for personal advantage in all things knows no bounds. Recently, he ensured that Ijan, Iluomoba and Igbemo-Ekiti are cut off from the electricity grid that supplies light to these communities but only ensured that his Afao-Ekiti community is connected to the same grid to enjoy light while he has also dualised the Afao township roads leaving neighbouring towns without any project.”
Olatubosun also accused the governor of inflating the cost of the waste bins he bought to a whopping N20 million each instead of the market value of N2 million, while he gave out contract for repainting the Government House to his blood brother for N200 million.
Accusing Fayose of falsehood in claiming Fayemi’s administration’s projects as his projects, Olatubosun said: “The asphalt overlay at Fayose Market he commissioned is an MDG project already paid for by the Fayemi administration. The asphalt plant he ‘commissioned’ was bought and paid for by Fayemi administration. Fayose only received the equipment when they were shipped into Nigeria.
“The Mathew Street road is the joke of the century as Fayose only fixed the culvert and graded some portions of the road which he now commissioned as a project. This is nothing short of taking Ekiti people for a ride. It is chicanery of the highest form.”