Ekiti State Governor, Kayode Fayemi has jettisoned plans to probe his predecessor, Ayodele Fayose, saying his fate lies in God’s hands and that of the anti-graft agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission EFCC.
Fayemi spoke with State House correspondents after a closed-door meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari, on Monday at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
He gave the disclosure in response to a question on whether he would go on with the probe of his predecessor, Fayemi, explaining that there was never a time he said he would probe Fayose.
“Well, I am sure I have never said anything about probe; I only gave hints that I would look into the books prior to my swearing-in.
“Looking into books or account is the duty of any new governor; you need to know what you found on the ground; I just talked about visitation panel into the education sector and institutions in the state.
“There are other sectors in the state, and it will be good for me not to check what we found when we came into office and share that with the citizens of the state.
“It is just accountability, not probe. I am not EFCC; I am not ICPC; there are institutions that are charged with the responsibility to do that and it is entirely up to them if they want to probe the governor or not.
“It is not my business; I leave the governor to God; I have said that before.’’
Fayose is currently being prosecuted by EFCC over an 11-count charge of conspiracy and money laundering.
On the state of education in the state, Fayemi said that Ekiti had a tradition of being the intellectual capital of the country but it seemed to have lost that edge lately.
He said that his government was working towards repositioning the sector particularly the basic and the tertiary sectors.
The governor said that he had set up visitation panel in all the tertiary institutions to review and recommend what the critical and challenging issues were and how the government should respond to the yearnings of the sector.
He said the government was taking specific steps to address access to education in the basic education sub-sector.
“Before now, Ekiti used to be the leading state in terms of school enrollment in the country but the latest figures we received from UBEC makes it clear that we are lagging far behind.
“We have moved from 96 percent enrolment in the entire country to about 45 percent meaning that about 55 percent of our school-age children are off school.
“That is unacceptable in a state like Ekiti and we need to find out what has happened between 2014 and 2018 leading to this appalling figure in terms of school enrolment.
“And one of the very first things we are doing to improve enrolment is to make sure that all fees and levies on the primary and secondary sector are removed; so we have removed that.
“We have returned free compulsory and qualitative education to our basic education sector,’’
Fayemi said that the government was also doing all it could to encourage more students to come to school. He said that state government was starting the school feeding programme in Ekiti State in order to ensure that kids that did not have the opportunity to be in school were in school.
“We are also ensuring that we pay salaries regularly because you cannot expect parents who have not received salaries for six to 10 months on the one hand and the children are being asked to pay education levy on the other hand to have the capacity to send such children to school.
“So it is a double whammy for such families; we need to make sure that education which sees in our party as a right and not a privilege at least at the basic level should be free, compulsory and qualitative and that is where we are returning Ekiti to,’’ he said.
