The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Ekiti State has alleged that the recent workers’ verification exercise in the state has revealed how over N4 billion entitlements of workers was diverted to the All Progressives Congress (APC) using ghost workers as a decoy.
The party alleged that ghost workers detected during the exercise was among the methods used to perpetrate the fraud by former Governor Kayode Fayemi’s administration.
In a statement by the State Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Jackson Adebayo, in Ado-Ekiti on Sunday, the party claimed that some of the civil servants who collaborated with the APC in the shady deal, and who claimed that they were short-changed, had exposed the deal.
Adebayo said the money involved in the fraud amounting to N2.1 billion was withdrawn from the salary accounts of civil servants and moved to the APC secretariat for sharing from time to time in the four years that the government led by Fayemi lasted in Ekiti State.
The PDP spokesman also added that the missing deductions from workers’ salaries for the months of April, May, June, July and August, 2014 running to about N1.8 billion was also traced to the APC secretariat, as information had it that it was packaged for the running of the party after Fayemi lost his re-election bid in June 2014.
“We have it on good authority that the missing deductions from civil servants’ salaries for five months were gathered together immediately it dawned on the Fayemi-led government that there will not be funds to maintain the party after Fayemi’s exit on October 16, 2014 because the party would not have access to the money from the ghost workers again.”
The PDP also stated that a certain amount of money set aside for the payment of members of the National Youth Service Corps which was about N220 million was given to members of the state executive of the APC by Fayemi as a parting gift.
“It is just unfortunate that most of these facts are coming out now. Initially, we thought they were mere rumours; it is now clear that APC government deliberately robbed Ekiti workers of their entitlements in an unprecedented fraudulent manner that cannot even be imagined in a Banana Republic.
“We are calling on all the stakeholders, especially the traditional rulers in Ekiti State and across Nigeria to prevail on the leadership of the APC to return all the money fraudulently moved to the party from the state’s account, particularly the deductions from workers’ salaries, considering the prevailing economic downturn the government of the state is facing now due to the huge debt left by the immediate past administration of the APC,” he added.
The party called on the anti-graft agencies to act on petitions submitted to them without further delay
