By Gbadamosi Oladimeji
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Ekiti State has accused Governor Kayode Fayemi of colluding with a Lagos-based private company, United Capital Plc, to loot over N6 billion from pensioners in the state.
This was made known in a statement by the party’s Caretaker Committee Secretary, Prince Diran Odeyemi.
The PDP described the state government’s new scheme, in which pensioners, desirous of getting their gratuities and pensions, are made to sign-off 15% of their entitlements as wicked, callous and fraudulent.
However, the party blamed Governor Fayemi for the accumulated pensions and gratuities in the state, saying, “During his first tenure when Ekiti State was receiving as much as N7 billion as monthly allocation and over N46 billion from the Excess Crude Account, Fayemi refused to pay retirees. He stopped allocating funds to the Pension Transition Arrangement Department in July 2012.”
The party asked further, “We want to ask Governor Fayemi if contractors in the state who are being paid with borrowed funds are also made to part with 15% of the contract sum as condition to get paid.”
“When Governor Fayemi returned as governor in 2018, he introduced favouritism to the payment of entitlements of retirees, as he chose to pay retired Permanent Secretaries who retired in 2018 and 2019, with gratuities ranging between N12 million and N15 million and monthly pension running to over N400,000 each, while the junior ones, who are the most vulnerable with gratuity not more than N2 million and monthly pension less than N30,000 were left unpaid.” PDP explained.
Odeyemi disclosed that the State Government was going to borrow over N40 billion to pay the pensioners, asking; “If a government is borrowing money that will be repaid by the pensioners and other indigenes of the state, including those yet to be born, how sensible is it to still make the pensioners part with 15% of their entitlement?”
