Fayemi denies vote buying allegations, vows to probe Fayose

Ekiti State Governor-elect, Dr Kayode Fayemi, has refuted the allegations of vote-buying during the last Saturday governorship election where he defeated the candidate of the ruling Peoples a Democratic Party (PDP) in the state and current deputy governor, Prof Olusola Eleka.

Fayemi said that he had no evidence of vote buying, adding that it was not in the character of his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) to buy votes.

Fayemi, who was declared winner of last weekend governorship election in Ekiti, spoke on Thursday at the Presidential Villa, Abuja in company of Kebbi State Governor Atiku Bagudu, after a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari.

The Governor-elect said, “I have no any substantive evidence of allegations of vote buying and intimidation. In the place where l voted, there was no vote buying anywhere. As far as our party is concerned, we did not engage in that, it is not our style.

We won the election fair and square and it was an election that we fought on issues and not on the basis of any vote buying. So, who ever has any evidence of that should present it to an independently verifiable audience.”

Fayemi added that it was the track record of his administration in his first tenure that sold him to Ekiti electorate.

He maintained that he had always been interested to see that people lived decently.

He said, “We have always been interested that our people lived a decent life, a life without hunger, with social support and that is why we were paying social security benefits to the elderly, we provided the youth graduate scheme for the recent graduates, provided support for the communities.

For us, we never saw stomach infrastructure from any pedestrian manner that the current administration has lived it up to.

For us, it is about total development of our people, human capital development in education, health care, in social services and infrastructure development. It is to tal services we focused in.

“We increased salaries three times so that people could put food on their table in four years. That was why we provided range of allowances for the workers .

There was a huge difference between what we did and the present administration with lack of salaries, heartless, despair and despondency. We are restoring the values and reclaiming our mandate.”

The Ekiti Governor-elect has also vowed to beam searchlight into the activities of outgoing Governor Ayodele Fayose’s administration.

Fayemi said that it would be irresponsible of him not to examine the records of Governor Fayose’s administration.

According to the governor-elect, he would be interested to know what the state earned in the past four years and how the money was spent.

He said, “Well l think we need to remove this election from personalities. This was an election that we fought on issues and it will be irresponsible on my part to come here and say that we will not examine what transpired in the last four years in the manner of government. What was received in Ekiti State and the expenditures in that period.

“Why were we not able to pay salaries in the state. These issues should be examined in the interest of good governance.

It is not about probing Fayose, probing Eleka etc, it is about not repeating the mistakes of the past and giving our people good government and how to do so will also involve looking at what transpired in the last four years.

Similarly, Kebbi State Governor Abubakar Bagudu commended the APC party leaders and Ekiti people for their roles in delivering the state to APC, adding that the people had spoken and that their wish should be respected.