Ekiti State Governor Ayodele Fayose has challenged the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to publish his personal accounts it has frozen to let the whole world know what are contained therein.
He also wants the anti-graft agency to make public the statement it extracted from the former National Security Adviser (NSA), Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd) in its ongoing probe of money meant for the purchase of arms and the funding of the last general elections in the country.
Meanwhile, a gubernatorial hopeful in Ekiti State and an All Progressives Congress (APC) chieftain, Dr. Makanjuola Akindele Owolabi in Kaduna at the weekend, faulted Fayose’s leadership style, saying the state needs to be rescued from his hands before its economy collapsed
Throwing the challenge at the weekend while featuring on a radio programme monitored in Ado Ekiti, the state capital, Fayose said publishing Dasuki’s statement would show whether the former NSA gave money to former Minister of State for Defence, Senator Musiliu Obanikoro or anybody to give him.
He remarked: “What I am facing in Ekiti is a war of the elite and incidentally, it is the masses that vote people into office.“We know some failed Ekiti politicians who now resume daily in the EFCC office to frame stories and give same to their commissioned newspapers to publish. It is only one or two newspapers that always have their so-called exclusive stories and they follow the same pattern.
“The EFCC is only engaged in a mind game. They think they can wear me out. That is not possible as God is on my side because I stand for the truth. EFCC has not told Nigerians how money was wired to me. They must be responsible to do investigation that would not be a media issue. What the EFCC and their APC collaborators are trying to do is to set the people of the state against me and they have failed.
“In my two accounts that they have frozen, I have N300 million in the fixed deposit one and N82 million in the other. Both accounts and my properties were duly declared in my Asset Declaration Form. They are treading the same 2006 path and they will fail woefully by the grace of God. What they did in 2006, the Supreme Court declared illegal and I came back to office exactly eight years after. It means one of us lied and was mischievous.”
Fayose also challenged the APC and its leaders to also tell the people how their own elections were funded, noting that a defector from the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) to the APC should not suddenly become an angel or a saint.
He said: “We cannot all be in the APC. If we are, then, we are no longer practising democracy. There must be opposition and that is to keep those in government on their toes.“But if you now make silencing the opposition your main programme, then, you are shortchanging the people. The people are hungry, they are ravaged by poverty and what you think is the best step to take is to kill the voice of the opposition. If the situation was this bad, the PDP would have been removed from office long time ago.”
On the June 21, 2014 governorship election that brought him to office, Fayose said his predecessor, Dr Kayode Fayemi and APC leaders accepted defeat and that both local and international observers described the poll as free and fair.
“After the APC leaders failed to stop my inauguration, get me impeached, they know that they will still lose again in 2018. What they are trying to do is to create a wedge between me and the people of the state who love me. As far as I am concerned, their project is dead on arrival. The voice of the people is the voice of God,” he stated.
