Segun Akanni, Toronto, Canada 
The All Progressives Congress in Ekiti State has lashed out at the Peoples Democratic Party governorship aspirants who on Monday announced dropping their ambitions to enable Governor Ayodele Fayose run for another term.
The party said the action of the aspiranta is shameful and a declaration that they are content with the “misery Fayose is spreading across the state, including a declaration that they are incompetent to perform better than Fayose if they have opportunity to lead the state”.
Some PDP governorship aspirants, including Abiodun Omoyeni, Dr. Sikiru Lawal, among others, led by Deputy Governor, Kolapo Olusola, had on Monday addressed a press conference where they announced that they had dropped their ambitions to support Fayose to run again in 2018 governorship election.
Fayose is seeking to contest again based on the argument that his first term was truncated by his impeachment and as such he has a right to seek to complete the tenure.
In a statement on Wednesday in Ado-Ekiti by the Publicity Secretary of the APC, Taiwo Olatunbosun, the party chided the aspirants for “lack of understanding of the pains that Ekiti people are suffering under Fayose”.
Olatunbosun said: “What the aspirants are saying is that they are okay with the mass poverty Fayose is spreading across the state and so he must be supported to continue impoverishing Ekiti people.
“They are also saying that they do not have solutions to the problems confronting the state if they are given opportunity to lead the state and so it is better to support Fayose to continue a government that promotes mass poverty in which the governor remains the only beneficiary from that mass poverty of the people.
“From N18b debts, Fayose has taken N42b loans that push Ekiti debts to N60b in three years for projects and workers’ benefits, yet he has refused to pay salaries, pensions, gratuities and benefits of former political office holders.
“Instead of benefiting Ekiti people in employment and contracts patronage, he has engaged his friends from other states to execute his projects awarded at over-bloated costs for personal benefit.
“His commissioners, House of Assembly members, teachers and civil servants remain unpaid for six months while widespread frauds are common feature in his government, all in a bid for personal gain while majority of Ekiti people suffer, even as insecurity soars in state in an unprecedented manner.
“If all these are what these aspirants see as what should continue with Fayose as the governor, it shows their approval of the burdens that Ekiti people are going through and a declaration that they cannot do better than Fayose if given opportunity to lead the state.”
