Ado-Ekiti — THE Ekiti State Government and the All Progressives Congress, APC, were yesterday engaged in a war of words over the debt profile of the state recently released by the Debt Management Office, DMO.
While the state government faulted the DMO report that the state borrowed N56 billion since Governor Ayodele Fayose assumed office and that a fresh N25 billion loan was applied for, the APC insisted that the governor would account for every kobo he borrowed but allegedly diverted for personal gains.
Reacting to the debt profile report, Fayose said that “the only fresh loan taken by his government was the N10 billion grant from the Excess Crude Account, which was released to all States for capital projects, N2.8 billion requested from Wema Bank to pay State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) counterpart fund out of which N1 billion has been accessed and N600 million for MDGs counterpart fund, which has been repaid.”
Special Assistant to the State Governor on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka, who reacted to the report in a statement issued on Monday, said; “There is no recent bulletin from the DMO website concerning the debt owed by any state as claimed in the false report. Nigerians, especially Ekiti people can visit the DMO website for further clarification.
“It is on record that Ekiti State Government was indebted to the tune of N86, 013,689,097 as at October 16, 2014, that Governor Fayose took over.
Fayose would account for every money borrowed — APC
In its reaction, the state Publicity Secretary of the APC, Taiwo Olatunbosun said that the latest debts figures confirmed the party’s position that Fayose was deliberately borrowing recklessly for elephant projects awarded to his cronies’ companies for personal benefit.
The APC spokesperson berated the governor for always lying to the public, saying the latest revelation had put to rest his “shameless lies in pursuit of fraudulent agenda for personal benefit while workers are unpaid for nine months.”
“With the latest revelation, we can now see that Fayose is a pathological liar, wicked and first class heartless soul who relies on reckless misinformation and deceit to mislead civil servants and the general public to misapply the state’s funds for personal benefit.”
“For a long time, he kept deceiving Ekiti people that he had not borrowed one kobo since assumption of office, blaming the debt profile on former Governor Kayode Fayemi.”
