…Says New Council Used as Cover-up
The Ekiti State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has accused the administration of Governor Kayode Fayemi of using the creation of 19 new local council development areas as a cover up to siphon huge sums of money out of the state.
In a statement by the State Publicity Secretary, Pastor Kola Oluwawole, in Ado-Ekiti on Thursday, PDP alleged that the outgoing administration is planning to siphon about N10 billion from the state’s treasury.
PDP further alleged that the money would be taken out of the treasury before the expiration of the tenure of the administration on 15th October this year.
In the statement, Oluwawole said the N10 billion was part of the accumulated slashed allocations due to the 16 local government areas in the state since the coming of the outgoing All Progressive Congress (APC) administration in October 2010 and other foreign and local aids collected by the government of the state since then.
He stated further that a special account was been operated in one of the first generation banks since 2010 where this money had been kept with stern instructions that under no circumstances should the money be withdrawn for any purpose until now that the issue of the local council development areas came on board.
He said that the money was being moved with the sole aim of being siphoned from Ekiti with a paltry sum left for the take-off of the newly-created LCDAs.
“The money has been moved from the bank as at Wednesday after an all night meeting where the governor informed his aides that the leadership of the APC has asked him to go ahead and sign the LGDAs bill the following morning, while caretaker committees will be inaugurated to manage the affairs and sign for the money as their take-off grants,” Oluwawole said.
According to the PDP publicity secretary, federal allocations to the constitutionally-recognised 16 local government councils for the months of August, September and October this year had also been arranged for sharing with the council caretaker chairmen billed to be coerced into the arrangements for cover-up.
He also alleged that the shares of the state from the crude oil surplus which were not spent because of the N25 billion bond obtained by the state government were being tampered with, just as donations and reserved counterpart funds meant for the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) and Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Funds, were not spared.
PDP called on all well-meaning indigenes of the state and all other relevant stakeholders in the Ekiti Project to, as a matter of urgency, caution the outgoing government to desist from financial recklessness and leave Ekiti treasury in good state for the sake of posterity.
