A story of clandestine looting of Ekiti state by Governor Kayode Fayemi is spreading like a wild fire in the state at the moment. At the centre of the whole scandal is a Lagos based Communication Company known as Eminent Communications. It was alleged that all Fayemi campaign posters from 2006 to 2009 were printed by the company. As the story goes, it is alleged the company is now being paid for those Fayemi’s campaign posters and handbills with Ekiti government money! First, it was a whopping N1.2billion REBRANDING JOB immediately Fayemi assumed office, and now Eminent is allegedly paid quarterly for “Rebranding campaign (ie Celebrating Ekiti Heroes & Heroines).” For this, N23,661,943.20 is paid to Eminent Communications Limited every three months.
This was made evident from a document made available to News of the People in which Eminent Communications allegedly made a request for N23,661,943.20 (N23.7million) for October – December, 2011. Interestingly the request paper that was sent to governor Fayemi on 17/10/2011 got approval of His Excellency on the same day as indicated here in the paper. When the communication company was contacted for a comment, a lady who spoke on phone declined to comment saying ‘we don’t speak with the press here but you can come to our office for discussion’ she then hung up. At the governor’s media office, an official who claimed not to speak on official capacity said they are aware of certain documents flying around to tarnish the image of the government, adding, we can’t comment on it anyway.
STORY CONFIRMED
Shortly after the above story came out, the indigenes of Ekiti under a group ekiti parapo posted the story as topic of their discussion. one of the governor’s numerous Special Adviser, Hakeem Jamiu responded thus:
“I would have ignored your enquiries which you hinged on the spurious stories in the magazine quoted above but for the unsuspecting public,
The story that 1,2 billion naira was spent on re branding is not only false but stupid. It is simply not correct .There are 58,000(fifty Eight thousand) workers in the state who collect 2.2 billion naira as monthly wage bill and this will increase in the next one month when the N19,300 minimum wage becomes operational. The average monthly allocation to Ekiti is 3 billion naira. So is it possible and sensible for any government to spend 1.2 billion for re brandingr? It is only your illegitimate boss that can do this and not a Fayemi!! I leave the burden of proof to you and your rumour mongering junk magazine.
On the 23 million naira you alleged was paid to a company as a quarterly consultancy fee for God knows what, it is not also true. It is a one off payment for packaging and airing of jingles of Ekiti Ambassadors on many TV stations including cable tv stations that was aired between October and December 2011as stated in the invoice. This is verifiable in the Ministry of Information and the media houses indicated on the invoice. So there is no big deal about this.
What is wrong in giving a job to a company that supported the struggle to reclaim the mandate your PDP party stole? Many of the companies that worked under the PDP government are still getting jobs under the Fayemi administration to show you the level of broad mindedness of the Governor. The administration under which you served committed many unpardonable financial atrocities and yet we have resisted the temptation to let this distract us. Sugbon ti omode ba sin owo asinju, o maa gbo itan awon ti baba oun je lowo. (If a child pesters his debtors too much, he will hear the story of his father’s creditors) My advice for you and your ilks is that you should endeavor to ask for any document you need from government under the FOI law rather than depending on fake documents or wasting your money to purchase fake documents when you have legal access to the original”
My Regards
Hakeem Jamiu
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