The Governor of Ekiti State, Mr Ayodele Fayose appears to be living with one week, one trouble syndrome. In recent times, the most intriguing however how the governor escaped the impeachment trap set by the All Progressives Congress, (APC) even when all odds were against him. In this interview with the head of his media brain box, Mr Lere Olayinka, he revealed the hidden facts about Fayose’s dramatic escape from what many people thought would have been his final waterloo, having survived several attempts since the controversial June 21 election that produced him. Irohinoodua correspondents, Peter Ogunsona and Babatunde Segun

Question: How do you access the success of the Ekiti State Government so far?

Answer: Accessing the government of Ekiti state will be subjective, how can I be accessing a government that I’m part of? If am to access the government what do you expect me to say? I would probably rate the government even high. So, if there is the need for the government to be accessed I think it should be accessed by the people on the street and not me.

What do you consider as your major achievements even in terms of strategic thinking and planning?

Achievement in government can be subjective because in most cases when you regard something as achievement it might not really be achievement, but one thing I will say is that majorly that we have achieved in Ekiti state is what we call political stability because one of the major problems of Ekiti state is political stability in the sense that Ekiti State was created in 1996 and by 2010 Ekiti state had like seven or eight governors: Niyi Adebayo, Ayodele Fayose, Fred Aderemi, Olurin, Tope Adelumiyi, Segun Oni, Tunji Odeyemi and Segun Oni again, Kayode Fayemi nine governors in 11 years so, if you are running a state like that, it is not likely to attract investors, because investors also look at the state andf how stable It is. I remember when I was with Segun On, then it got to a point where banks stopped giving political appointees loans and other facilities because they were not sure when the Segun Oni’s Government was going.
If it happens like that to political appointees you should also know that business men and women will not be able to come to the state because if you are Oni’s friend, bringing your investment to Ekiti state because your friend is now the Governor of Ekiti State you don’t know what will happen next, so for the first time we’ve had government that spent its own four years and another that wants to have its four years despite the fact that some people want to destabilize the government, that did not work and at least people now have rest of mind to be able to continue, again the government have been able to sort out some roads in Ado-Ekiti .

Question: Concretely, what have you achieved?
You can see that some roads have been constructed even though Ekiti has been constrained with funds. We inherited over 80 billion debts, 25 billion naira loan, over 30 billion Naira commercial loan over 15billion naira from all banks even at that the government has been able to sustain the payment of workers’ salary because the economy of this state is tied to the apron of public servants, the moment they don’t get their salaries in two months, the economy of the state will collapse . It is from the salary they get that the money gets into circulation. We have been able to sustain that. Today is July 22 at least we have been able to pay up to June we are owing one month salary that was September last year that the previous government refused to pay and we have also paid pension I think up to April.

Question: The victory of Gov Ayo Fayose is controversial. What do you think is the most important factor that led to your victory?

Answer: The electoral victory of PDP and Governor Ayo Fayose is based on the categories of voters. Those who voted Governor Ayodele Fayose as a Person.
Those who are lovers of the PDP. Those whose votes were against Kayode Fayemi
The people voted against the government that did not serve them at all for example, take example of this place, the Broadcasting Service of Ekiti State (BSES) owned by the government for four years, even not an Okada was bought for this place to operate. He donated vehicle to Federal Government owned radio station he also donated a brown new bus to NTA and some other organizations in the state. This place for four years, there was no single major investment even the government of Segun Oni awarded contract for the television equipment including (OBVAN), almost their 70% contract sum was paid. When Fayemi came here, he abandoned the project OBVAN. As we speak, the van is with the contractor in Abuja lying useless and valueless and two brown new Toyota Hilux vehicles and Fayemi refused to do anything to actualize the project. So , if you are running government like that, you run government in a way that people will look at you and begin to ask, are these people actually from Ekiti State where Government choose to borrow money to build civic centers, borrow money to plant flowers, borrow money to build pavilion, governors house, the same government that said Ekiti could not fund more than one University, the same Government that scrapped the functional and existing University, that Government have money to build Governor’s house, so all those things.
As far back as 2012, people have made up their mind to vote against the Government. Unfortunately, Fayemi and those people that are with him did not get the message. The PDP now picked Ayodele Fayose as their candidate.
Question: But the government appear to be filled with contradictions, even within its own party?
Whether you like it or not, Fayose’s name is a brand star. He was governor before and people saw what he did when he was governor. There is a gang up against him, it was that gang up that took him out of that power and people said since this man has left what has changed in terms of the transformation of the state? Nothing has changed. They felt more comfortable with him, they chose him. That’s all. The people voted for him unfortunately after that, we started hearing stories like people voted because of stomach infrastructure, because Fayose distributed rice as if Fayemi did not personally share jollof rice at least I have photograph of Fayemi putting on apron and his wife sharing jollof rice as if Fayemi then did not share Somovita including Rega dry gin popularly known as “Tesojue.” One thing they don’t realize is that the people of Ekiti state if you study their mind very well, the moment they change their mind that they are not going to vote for you if you like use all the whole compound to buy cars and be distributing to them individually they will not vote for you, you shared a lot of money but people stood their ground and they also came back with photo-chromic paper but court turned down their petition, they tried impeachment they couldn’t impeach because people rose in defence of their government. So it wasn’t a kind of magic, it was a result of people’s decision to elect their own governor.

read more;

https://irohinodua./2015/08/04/exclusive-how-fayose-escaped-impeachment-by-lere-olayinka/