The All Progressives Congress (APC), Ekiti State, has asked Governor Peter Ayo Fayose to perish his thought of spending the N5.52bn he recently collected as allocation from the Federal Government on the payment of his phoney contractors.
The party said the money should be spent to pay salaries of workers who have endured the pains unpaid salaries for six months.
In a statement by Publicity Secretary, Taiwo Olatunbosun, the party said the constant skipping of workers’ salaries by Fayose had impacted negatively on the effectiveness of the workers and the economy of the state in general.
According to Olatunbosun, payment of outstanding salaries should be a top priority for Fayose, failure of which would result in total collapse of the state’s economy already in crisis over unpaid salaries for six months.
“Workers in the employment of Ekiti State Government have passed through various stages of difficult times in the hands of the outgoing reckless and mindless Fayose-led government. Now they are seeing hell, starving seriously with many of them looking gaunt due to the pangs of hunger that have dealt with them.
“We are vehement in this demand to end workers’ plights. Enough is enough,” Olatunbosun said, adding that the only reason Fayose had not been paying salaries was because of financial impropriety and nothing more.
He stresses that “this time around, we will compel him to see the welfare of workers as of topmost priority”.
The APC spokesman said that if the rumour making rounds that Fayose intended to prioritise payment of his phoney contractors from the allocation he collected recently at the expense of the workers was true, then he should be ready to face not only the wrath of the workers, but also that of the APC.
Olatunbosun added: “We are ready to seek all legal means possible to make sure he doesn’t waste the N5.52 billion money on his personal luxuries this time around.
“Fayose is shameless and an unrepentant slave driver. We have said it time and time again that workers are not his priority.
“His plan to pay the contractors is also not borne out of concern for those ones, but out of selfish interest, since he is expecting kickbacks in high percentages from them, whereas there will be nothing for him from the payment of workers’ salaries.”
Olatunbosun said APC empathised with the workers who had been at the receiving end of Fayose’s wickedness all these while and pleaded with them to exercise a little more patience under his heavy yoke.
Fayose, he said, was only acting in caretaker capacity and he owed it a duty to carry the incoming governor along in whatever actions he wanted to take that might affect the people until he finally hands over on October 16.