Fayose’s White Paper, Failed Desperation To Nail Fayemi- APC
The All Progressives Congress (APC) in Ekiti State Tuesday said Monday’s White Paper on the probe panel report on former Governor Kayode Fayemi’s administration is a failed desperation to tarnish his reputation.
The party in a press release issued by the Publicity Secretary of APC in the state Taiwo Olatunbosun, said the Ekiti state government’s action under the leadership of governor Ayodele Fayose was a desperate bid to embarrass the former governor.
Fayose had set up a judicial commission of enquiry to probe Fayemi’s administration notably to unravel how Fayemi allegedly embezzled N852m SUBEB cash loan obtained from Access Bank.
Fayemi kicked against the composition of the panel in court, sitting partisanship of members who were allegedly PDP members and some civil servants that served under Fayose’s authority, which made their membership suspect to a fair hearing.
The party pointed out that Access Bank appeared before the panel to exonerate Fayemi, explaining that Fayemi never stole that but that it (the bank) took back the loan to its vault when the state government failed to firm up agreement on loan repayment.
According to APC, the panel turned in its verdict holding Fayemi culpable and subsequently, Fayose raised a panel to come up with a White Paper, which yesterday banned Fayemi and his Commissioner of Finance, Dapo Kolawole, from holding public offices for 10 years.
They described both the panel and White Paper as a kangaroo stunt to nail Fayemi, saying the verdict would not stand in the face of illegality that went into the exercise.
Olatunbosun described Fayose as, “a man who cannot survive in a society where the law works”, regretting that even lawyers in his government failed to teach him some basic tenets of how law works in placing ban on Nigerian citizens to hold public office.
Olatunbosun said: “All Nigerians know that Fayose is recklessly lawless and cannot survive in societies where the law works.
“His so-called White Paper is not only laughable but also a disgrace to all Ekiti people home and abroad with the way that Fayose has taken ignorance, vendetta and debauchery to a ridiculous level because we knew all along that this is what Fayose wanted to do.”
“We had expected his Attorney General, if he knows his onions, to have advised him that only a competent court of law can bar Nigerians from holding public office under the Nigerian Constitution.
“A situation where Fayose assembled PDP members and pliable civil servants as a panel with a strict directive to indict Fayemi at all costs and thereafter issue a White Paper banning him from holding public office cannot hold water in a society where the law works.”
