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Hon. Bamidele Faparusi

2018: Blackmail of APC Governors won’t help Fayose, Faparusi insists

Hon. Bamidele Faparusi

A governorship aspirant in Ekiti State and member of the seventh House of Representatives, Hon. Bamidele Faparusi, has said the resort to blackmail by Governor Ayodele Fayose against his colleague governors in the All Progressives Congress(APC) fold won’t give his party victory in the 2018 governorship poll.

Making a particular reference to the issue of proposed replacement of some incompetent teachers in Kaduna State by Governor Nasir el-Rufai, Faparusi said Fayose shouldn’t display ignorance about the fact that each state enjoys the constitutional powers to act independently without external interference.

He said Fayose’s tirade against his colleague, El-Rufai and the continued blackmail that the action taken by the Kaduna governor was a design of all the APC governors was a calculated attempt to cajole Ekiti people ahead of the Ekiti governorship poll.

In a statement in Ado Ekiti on Tuesday, Faparusi, who described Fayose as a ‘meddlesome interloper’ in the teachers’ palaver in Kaduna State, stated that the governor should look inwards and address all the problems pummeling the state civil servants in Ekiti State rather than playing to the gallery on the issue of other states.

“As much as I am not holding brief for Governor El-Rufai or support any of his actions, the policies of Kaduna State should be an internal affair of that state alone. Why was Governor Fayose externalizing the issue in a far North state just because of election coming up next year in Ekiti?

“The 1999 constitution vested the state with powers to operate independently based on peculiarities in terms population, ethnic composition , economic and political potentials etc.

“If governor Fayose loves Ekiti teachers that much, why couldn’t he abandon the misplaced flyover bridge to pay the five months salary arrears being owed them?

“Many of Ekiti pensioners have not been paid for eight months. Since he came on board, no retired teacher has been paid a dime as gratuity, yet he claimed to be teachers’ friend.

“During the 2017 Teachers’ Day, the governor announced the donation of N100 million to over 16,000 Ekiti teachers, which goes for N4500 per head. What can this peanut do in the life of highly
impoverished Ekiti teachers under this tense and critical situation?”, Faparusi queried.

The APC chieftain added that governor El-Rufai’s action was predominantly a domestic affair of Kaduna State, which he said would have no backlash in Ekiti.

He described Ekiti people as intellectually sophisticated and discernible enough to be able to decipher that Governor Fayose was only playing dirty politics with the Kaduna issue.

“Let me remind Governor Fayose that his antics can’t go too far. His government has passed into laws the anti-open grazing and the anti-cultism laws, the offences that now carry life jail in our state. Almost all the PDP states in Nigeria with the exception of Ekiti and Enugu have no such laws.

“So, how can the perceived offence of an APC State in Nigeria out of the 24 states being controlled by the party now constitute an albatross to the chance of a party in an election?

“Governor Fayose must face the reality that his game is up and that Ekiti people are now wiser and I am sure they will vote massively for the candidate of APC in the coming election having suffered under Fayose’s misrule”, he concluded.

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