Ekiti State workers, under the aegis of the Enlightened Workers Forum (EWF), have accused Governor Ayodele Fayose of spending N3 billion on chartered flights in pursuit of his political and personal affairs.
The workers regretted that the alleged waste of the state’s funds on hiring of private jets had not added value to governance or been beneficial to the residents for nearly four years of the Fayose administration.
In a statement yesterday by its Coordinator, Mike Bamidele, EWF alleged that Fayose spends N26 million monthly on chartered flights, adding that this “has dug a big hole in the Ekiti treasury”.
The workers’ pressure group alleged that Fayose junkets to Abuja, Lagos and Port Harcourt “where he has personal and political interests, leaving governance to suffer abysmally in Ekiti”.
The statement reads: “We are in possession of evidence of how the governor frequently flew members of his family …in and out of the state and to locations where he spends weekends and usually holidays with his associates.
“For 47 months, the governor was said to have made countless trips and checks at aviation hiring companies were said to have revealed a mind-boggling accumulation of flight time logs that run into a monthly average of N26 million.
Comprehensive checks at aviation companies showed that a jet costs about $2,500 per hour and a round trip costs around $20,000-$40,000, depending on the whims of the client, who sometimes delays planes for hours to conclude their affairs.”
But Commissioner for Information, Mr. Lanre Ogunsuyi, described the allegation as a “figment of infantile imagination of EWF”.
According to him, EWF is an “unenlightened” Ogunsuyi as untrue. He said the group was only playing to the gallery to please the opposition which he described as its political paymasters.
“The allegation is untrue, does the governor charter plane to everywhere he goes every month? We are waiting for their so-called evidence to prove their allegations.”
