Victor Ogunje in Ado Ekiti
The All Progressives Congress (APC) in Ekiti State has described the accusation by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that the state Governor, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, has budgeted the sum of N1.2billion for his travelling expenses as the height of imbecility.
APC added that the opposition has finally dragged itself into a level of shamelessness that will finally consume it and drive a wedge between it and the few members who still maintain any form of association with it.
In a statement issued yesterday by the APC Director of Media and Publicity, Sam Oluwalana, the party wondered why PDP “would descend so low to attack an individual who is trying hard to clean up the gargantuan mess it left behind after four years of looting and mis-rule.”
On the allegation of the N1.2 billion travelling expenses, the APC spokesman explained that it was a wicked attempt to lay the blame for an offence committed by the former governor on the present administration.
He added that it was actually the former governor who was widely reported to have stormed the state House of Assembly, seized the gavel from the former Speaker and single-handedly passed the 2018 budget.
The statement read: “According to Punch Newspaper story of June 17, 2019, Ayodele Fayose’s budget was N98.6 billion with a paltry 718 million going to the agriculture sector, while he awarded a whopping N1.2billion for his travelling expenses.
“They have failed at everything, including governance, now they have failed in simple propaganda.
“For them, mudslinging and misinformation is a fair game, an act which the present APC administration finds repulsive and will not involve itself in.
“This was a party that was in the saddle for years in the state during which the people were pauperised to the extent of celebrating each time a ‘cup of rice’ was served to them.”
The statement also noted that in its four years of misrule in the state, the PDP, through Governor Fayose, “turned the state and the people to beggars that picked crumbs from the table of self-styled master, whose profligate and corrupt practices were of constant embarrassment to the people of the state and Nigerians who are familiar with his moral deficiency.
“The present administration is just settling down to find a way of settling seven month unpaid salaries of civil servants, while contracts awarded in dubious circumstances are being corrected.”
The statement further added that according to reports in the debt management office made available on its websites, Fayose took the debt profiles of the state from N30 billion in December 31, 2014, to N117.6 billion in December 31, 2017.
It added: “This is a party that found it impossible to pay salaries of workers for eight months even when it was N18,000, now accusing a state governor of not paying N30,000 minimum wage, which its implementation has not commenced in any state in the country. Not even by the federal government!
“Pretending to care or love the people, the PDP, in the statement, lamented that Fayemi should be shopping for funds to pay N30,000 minimum wage. This is rather ridiculous for a party notorious for being a legend in salaries indebtedness.”
