Ekiti State Governor Ayo Fayose and the All Progressives Congress (APC) have disagreed over the state actual debt profile.
The governor alleged that the N25 billion bonds taken from the capital market and N31 billion commercial loans taken by the Kayode Fayemi administration were responsible for his inability to pay workers’ salaries.
But the APC, while admitting that its administration led by Dr. Fayemi took the N25 billion bond to execute legacy projects, described Fayose’s allegation of taking another N31 billion commercial loan as a “blatant lie which is far from the truth”.
The party called on the Debt Management Office (DMO) of the Federal Ministry of Finance to speak out and clarify Ekiti’s debt status.
The APC, in a statement also yesterday by its spokesman, Taiwo Olatunbosun, said a clarification from DMO has become imperative.
The statement accused the governor of “giving inconsistent figures on different occasions that had cast doubts on the integrity of the state’s financial application.”
Fayose, in a statement yesterday by his Chief Press Secretary, Idowu Adelusi, alleged that N1.2 billion is being deducted monthly from the state’s allocation to service loans obtained by the Fayemi administration.
He accused the APC of “gingering Labour to remain adamant on the issue of strike”.
The governor claimed that if the N1.2 billion being deducted is added to the state’s monthly allocations, his administration will not owe workers.
Fayose said he was surprised that when Fayemi took the loans, which allegedly made payment of workers’ salaries difficult, the labour did not kick against the move.
The governor alleged that the strike had been politicised because of his “criticism of the bad policies of the Federal Government and his fight against tyranny”.
He wondered why some states where workers were owed more salaries than Ekiti were still enjoying the understanding of labour.
Fayose accused the Fayemi administration of inflating figures of the monthly Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) for “political reasons and giving the labour wrong information and false hope”.
“A state like Ekiti without any industry and Fayemi administration would post that it realised between N600 million and N700 millio0n monthly from IGR whereas in the actual sense Ekiti IGR had never gone beyond N300 million or N350 million monthly,” the governor said.
Fayose said he was surprised that the labour, which praised him for transparency, was now blackmailing him as if he had kept Ekiti money somewhere.
“The labour should hold the Fayemi Administration responsible for the economic woes in the state and stop castigating me,” Fayose said.
He said: “During my first term, I did not borrow a dime to run the state. I paid salaries on 22nd of every month. When I was going in October 2006, I left N10.4 billion in government coffers.
“As a responsible governor, the state cannot be financially buoyant and I will refuse to pay the workers. A child cannot ask a good father for fish and the father will give him stone. I have been sounding the warning about the nation’s economy since last year.”
The governor explained: “For the N25 billion bond Fayemi took from the capital market, the state pays over N600 million monthly to service it and we will pay till 2022.
“On the bond money, there is an irrevocable standing order for the monthly deductions; the Federal Government has no power over that. It was the commercial loans they took that were converted to bail-out funds by the Federal Government and we pay over N300 million to service the debts monthly and that will subsist till 2036.
“Also, they left debts on fertilser, vehicles purchased for different reasons and groups and other commitments for which over N100 million is deducted from our monthly allocation. If these funds are not deducted and we have them at hand, our situation would have been better than this.”
Denying Fayose’s allegations, Olatunbosun said: “In a programme he appeared on Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) recently, he put the deductions at N1.5 billion. But again few days later on Africa Independent Television (AIT), he said the figure is N600 million. We make bold to say that Fayose’s claim of N1. 2 billion deduction from Ekiti monthly allocation is total fallacy and Fayose’s creation to justify his inability to pay workers’ salary.
“How he spent the bailout was not clear because he collected the bailout cash of N9.6 billion at the time Ekiti was owing only one month salary, which he falsely quoted at N2.6 billion and so how he spent N9.6 billion to pay a month salary remains unclear.”
Accusing Fayose of “deliberate and malicious misrepresentation of facts”, he challenged him to produce in writing, the purported commendation he received from the EFCC and the ICPC over the N9.6 billion bailout fund he is yet to account for.
On Fayose’s claim that the Fayemi administration borrowed another N31 billion commercial loan apart from the N25 billion bond, Olatunbosun challenged Fayose to provide evidence of this loan and what it was used for “since records are there in the office of the Account General if he is sure of his facts”.
“The truth of the matter is that Fayose has resorted to blatant lies to cover up his many shady financial transactions and misapplication of state funds,” the APC spokesman said.
On Fayose’s allegation that the IGR of the state was never N600 million during the Fayemi administration, Olatunbosun referred him to the published audited accounts of the state signed by the then Auditor General “instead of persistent lies to cover up his financial recklessness which accounted for his inability to pay workers.
Urging the governor to present the schedules of payments as he claimed for public scrutiny, the APC spokesman said it was not enough to deceive the public that he always presented federal allocation receipts to workers to see first-hand the financial status of the state.
He added that actual monthly receipts and myriads of unbearable taxes imposed on Ekiti people and pupils in primary schools did not support his claim of cash squeeze.
He said: “Fayose only wants to confuse Ekiti people with the ‘more you look, the less you see’ analysis of the financial position of the state that has become his trademark.”
“On his claim that he left N10 billion in Ekiti coffers during his aborted first tenure, this is a lie that has been debunked many times.
“Fayose, who is an advocate of governments not borrowing beyond their tenure and vowed on his inauguration in 2014 not to borrow kobo during his tenure, has already borrowed N19.6 billion, which deduction is obviously beyond his tenure, thus showing his insincerity and demagoguery, Olatunbosun said.
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