APC tackles Fayose over delayed salaries

The All Progressives Congress in Ekiti State has accused Governor Ayodele Fayose of implementing policies that threaten the development of the Ekiti people.

In a statement on Sunday, the Publicity Secretary of the APC, Taiwo Olatubosun, said  instead of promoting policies that would take Ekiti people out of poverty, the governor was busy removing the attention of the people from self-sustaining schemes by distributing one kilogram rice for one-day feeding need of a family.

He argued that timely payment of salaries could help workers do extra works at their spare time to increase their family earnings.

The governor had promised to pay workers after the verification exercise, which he said was aimed at blocking about N500 million loss to ghost workers monthly through the e-payment system.

The statement read in part, “What the governor is doing is stark wickedness to the people by distributing one kilo of rice for one-day need of the few out of millions living in abject poverty at the time more purposeful administrators all over the world are setting up self-sustaining schemes that permanently address the poverty problems among the masses.

“Distribution of a ‘congo’ of rice to Ekiti people at this period when he cannot pay salary is a wicked diversion of the people’s attention from real problems that confront them daily and threat to unleashing their entrepreneurial skills for self-sustenance and an attempt to turning elitist people into beggars.

“Is it rice they will use to pay their children’s school fees and other needs? Is the life of an elitist person now permanently reduced to rice alone?”‎

But Fayose, in a reaction, said the APC lacked moral rights to criticise his government policies having ran the state aground in its four years of Kayode Fayemi’s administration.

Fayose, according to a statement by his Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka, said, “It is preferable to give the people what to eat than spending billions of borrowed fund to build hilltop government house meant for just one family as done by the APC government.”

The governor asked the APC to mention benefits derivable from the pavilion, government house, civic centre and other white elephant projects that the party used borrowed fund to execute.

“Here is a party that used borrowed fund to plant flowers in Ado Ekiti and none of the flowers can be seen anywhere in the state capital talking about our government’s policies not being developmental.

“Oba Adejugbe General Hospital, Ado Ekiti, was almost completed before Fayemi assumed office. That hospital was not completed throughout the four years of APC government. They even went to the criminal and ridiculous level of commissioning the hospital with its inside yet to be painted and no single bed provided,” Fayose said.