Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State
has said that President Muhammadu Buhari has donated N12.5 billion from
the Treasury Single Account (TSA) to Kogi State chapter of the All
Progressives Congress (APC) ahead of the governorship elections.
Fayose claims the donations from the
federal account is to enable APC rig the elections in favour of their
candidate even as Lokoja, the state capital, stood still for Governor
Idris Wada on Monday, November 16, 2015.
Governor Fayose likened President
Buhari’s administration to that of former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s
administration, describing them as “democratic dictators” where the rule
of law is not respected. He added that he was not surprised based on
their military background.
Fayose made these remarks at the
confluence stadium in Lokoja during the grand finale of the Peoples
Democratic Party (PDP) rally, adding that looking critically at the
administration of the APC at the centre, people have discovered that the
Buhari-led government does not posse is an iota of respect for human
rights, saying the president only concentrated on chasing PDP members on
allegations of corruption when many of his men who surround him are
facing trial for gross corrupt practices.
He asked where President Buhari was
when the APC cleared the former governor of the Kogi State, Alhaji
Abubakar Audu, to contest the governorship of the state when he (Audu)
has avalanche of corrupt charges hanging on his neck in the last 12
years. He called on the president to carefully look around himself
before running after other people, saying the nation belongs to
Nigerians just as he pointed out that every citizen had equal right.
The Ekiti governor said: “The APC-led
government only goes around the challenges confronting the nation, the
issue of Boko Haram, and the dwindling economic situation became worse
in the last six
months of the Buhari administration. This government has
only achieved a lot in the area of chasing shadows, making the nation
worse for the people.”
Fayose alleged that the sum of N12.5
billion was released by the federal government two days ago to Kogi
State to enable their party perpetrate rigging and urged the people to
take their destiny in their hands.
The Minister of Information and Culture,
Alhaji Lai Mohammed has debunked the allegation saying no such impunity
is going on in Buhari’s administration.
In his statement, Mohammed said those
behind this accusation would have known of this fact if they had allowed
themselves some measure of honesty.
He said: ‘’It is understandable that the
psyche of those who are making the frivolous allegations concerning the
TSA has been badly affected by the impunity that permeated the country
under the immediate past administration, when unappropriated funds were
freely used to finance elections and the public till was seen as an
extension of personal piggy banks.
‘’But the lies that have been wilfully
disseminated by scandalmongers over the TSA cannot and will not fly,
because it was precisely to put an end to such impunity that Nigerians
voted massively for President Muhammadu Buhari, who has an unblemished
reputation for integrity, due process, transparency and the rule of law.
‘’Those behind the rumour that a single
company, Systemspecs, made 25 billion Naira from charging 1 per cent of
TSA funds that passed through the company’s software, Remita, may need
to return to elementary school to get some lessons in arithmetic.
‘’This is because in order for 1 per
cent charge to fetch 25 billion Naira, the funds accruing into the TSA
must have reached 2.5 trillion Naira. Yet, the total amount of funds in
the TSA to date is still much less than 2 trillion.
‘’More importantly, at the time the
Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) ordered that all monies
that were erroneously charged as ‘revenue’ be returned to the TSA
Account late last month, the TSA had less than 800 billion Naira. It
therefore beggars belief that anyone could attempt to mislead the public
by raising a false alarm that a firm made 25 billion Naira in TSA
charges.”
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