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THISDAY, THE SUNDAY NEWSPAPER ˾ APRIL 15, 2018
SUNDAY INTERVIEW t ‘KAYODE FAYEMI: MY RECORD WILL STAND FOR ME’ t Continued from Pg. 70
I cherish my integrity, so, if you are going to associate me with anything that is untoward, I owe it a duty to challenge it. And that is why having ever bothered, not that it can debar me or does anything, but I want it trashed out. Anyone who needs to know what I did in office, I left almost a thousand page handover note. So, if he has had the presence of mind and gone through my handover note, the record is clear, the record is very clear! And there is nothing that I did in office that was done outside due process. So, I don’t even have any reason to dignify that. I can see that both Fayose and his agents even in my own party, they are making a mountain out of a mole hill. But you then have to ask yourself, if you say this man is not important, this man is not popular; this man is not wanted by Ekiti people, why don’t you let him stew in his own juice? Still, why are you all out to stop him from even running? You are quick to say the governor is afraid of you hence he is doing all he is doing to stop you. But are you not worried that he can pull a lot of incumbency weight to actually unsettle you further? Well, isn’t that what he has tried to do with his white paper? As I said to my people, the party executives, I have a red card for him. Let him wield incumbency, we will wield our non-incumbent weight and we will see who is going to be on the street after October 16 in Ekiti, walking free. He is running helter-skelter now, going everywhere begging, even going to certain officials and influential people in government begging that he wanted to be the campaign manager or President Buhari in the South-west.
kids in schools to pay 2000-3000. This is a lot of money in a poor economy in which parents are not receiving salaries regularly. Local government workers, state civil servants are owed averagely six months. You have to ask yourself how people are surviving in this poverty-stricken situation. So, for me, that is the first level of attack – the Ekiti poverty index and you cannot do it without social investment. All of the social investment programmes that we had here have today been destroyed. There is no social security support for the elderly, there is no free healthcare again in Ekiti, there is no recruitment into key empowerment programmes like the Peace Corps that I introduced; the traffic management authority, the nurses are leaders that we recruited. There has been no recruitment since I left and there has also been no wage increase. When I was governor in Ekiti, I increased the salaries of workers three times in four years. Not one naira has been added to their salaries. I introduced the rural teachers’ allowance. I introduced core subject allowance. So, if you’re teaching Sciences; Mathematics, English and Integrated Science, you get an additional incentive because we need those subjects so critically in our schools. You get 20% of your salary. If we now post you outside of Ado-Ekiti or Ikere, to some rural communities, you get an additional 20% on your salary, and we have series of capacity building programmes that we were running for teachers and civil servants. Civil servants were receiving trainings. It was even sending many of them abroad – many of them to royal Institutes of public administration in UK, some of them to Kenya, some of them to Ghana. All of these things I am saying to you they do not even happen! In
Really? Quote me. He knows that I know what I’m saying; that they should leave him to be Buhari’s campaign manager in the South-west. He has allies even inside the APC that he is working with and they will all be disgraced and shamed. If you make it back, what specific areas of development are you looking at? For me, anything that is not people-centred is not going to receive my priority. Look, Ekiti has been plunged into the pangs of poverty. We will take Ekiti out of it. Just recently, BudgIT released the state of the states’ assessment that they did, which had the health indices of the states. As at the end of 2014, Ekiti ranked lowest rate in HIV prevalence, one of the lowest in infant mortality and maternal mortality, one of the lowest in out of school children. Today, it has the fastest rate of out of school children and what is the difference made? We made sure that education was free and qualitative when I was in office. Now, they are asking
I am running on my record but that record, naturally, will also include the record of my party at the centre. But what is our record at the centre? That we have brought back Nigeria from the brink of collapse
any case, how can they happen in a state where they don’t hold executive council meeting? There is no state council that meets in Ekiti. I should know I was governor there. I still have people there. So, that template just has to be deepened in order to get our people out of this debt of hopelessness and heartlessness. For him, his strategy is simple, reduce them to nothing so you automatically reduce their sense of self-worth, you can keep throwing N100 and N200 at them and cup of rice to keep shouting that you exist – you are the one and only. This is in Ekiti that produced the first graduate in 1867. So, what are we talking about? There is the belief that the APC has its internal challenges and it could rub off on your election in the state. Are you worried? Am I worried about what? I mean the state of your party ahead of your election? State of our party in Ekiti? Yes…generally Our party in Ekiti is united. I believe every committed APC party member in Ekiti wants us back in Government House and I believe they will do everything to get us back into the Government House. Are there differences of opinions on how we would get back? Of course!! In any human setting, you are bound to have differences of opinions and we are not immunised to that. We have people in our party who felt that APC should not put back a former governor in office. There are those who have those views, but would that be enough reason for them to jump out of our party simply because their preferred choice did not win? I don’t think so. I have seen this. In 2006, when I won the primary, some gubernatorial competitors of mine, left the party, but they were shocked that the bulk of their supporters stayed in the party. They didn’t leave with them because for them, they are progressives. Yes, their preferred choice did not have sufficient grounds for them to move away from their party. And they didn’t. We don’t want to be complacent. We want to ensure that everybody comes together as far as this race is concerned but I have already said I am running on my record but that record, naturally, will also include the record of my party at the centre. But what is our record at the centre? That we have brought back Nigeria from the brink of collapse; people can only imagine what would have happened to this country if the PDP had remained in power. The vice president, God bless his soul, gave a very graphic analysis at the Tinubu colloquium. People don’t do the math. When you do the math, you will appreciate what we have done in this country in the last three and a half year.