PDP Says Fayemi Plots to Scam Pensioners of N6bn

Posted by African Examiner African News, Featured, Latest Headlines, News, News Across Nigeria, News From The State Saturday, July 11th, 2020

By Nwa Diokpa

(AFRICAN EXAMINER) – The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in Ekiti State has alleged that governor Kayode Fayemi is conniving with a Lagos based private company, United Capital Plc, to loot over N6 billion from pensioners in the State.

The party stated this in a statement signed by the PDP Caretaker Committee Secretary, Prince Diran Odeyemi, stating that the former governor stating that pensioners will sign –off 15 percent of their entitlements.

The statement said: “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 fund to the Pension Transition Arrangement Department in July 2012.

“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 percent 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 retiree, 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.”

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 percent of their entitlement?”

He also accused the governor of trying to benefit from the sweat of the pensioners.

He added: “We have been reliably informed that the 10 percent, which amounts to over N4 billion is to be paid into a offshore account owned by a crony of the governor.

“To us in the PDP, it will amount to the peak of wickedness and selfishness for Governor Fayemi to profit from his own inhumanity to the pensioners and this new scam of making the poor pensioners to part with 15 percent of their entitlements for his own personal benefits will fail.”