Wole Balogun, Ado Ekiti
A former Group Managing Director of Wema Bank, and one time deputy to Ekiti Governor Ayo Fayose, Adebisi Omoyeni, who is one of the 35 governorship candidates published by INEC for the July 14 poll, and candidate of the People Alliance for National Development and Liberty Party (PANDEL), has assured the people of Ekiti that his administration would not owe workers salaries if elected.
Omoyeni, who recently defected from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to pursue his governorship ambition, spoke to newsmen in his Ikere-Ekiti home country at the weekend, saying national ruling party All Progressive Congress (APC), and major opposition PDP had failed the people of the state, offering himself as the credible alternative.
“We will inspire and make our people to believe in government and leaders once again through this campaign and when we win we shall work day and night to revive the state,” the candidate said.
Assuring that he would make payment of workers salaries a priority, he slammed Fayose’s government for failing to pay salaries, saying: “A government that met two salary arrears and increased it to eight months is a total failure. A number of people will form alliance with me, we need to save the state from rabble rousers.”
Omoyeni said, if elected, his administration’s industrialisation agenda will be anchored on agriculture and education to give the state a new economy and change the character of the state from the civil service state tag.
He promised to create at least 10,000 high-paying jobs within four years through agriculture and agro-allied jobs.
“Within four years we will work to give Ekiti a new character different from the tag of civil service state. Our government will target rice, cocoa and cassava production and build industry and wealth around the value chain by partnering with key industries and private sector.
“We will create 10,000 quality jobs through integrating production of rice, cocoa and cassava with industrial processors. We will bring young people into farming by organizing them into cooperatives and link them up as out-growers to industrial off-takers,” he said.
Lamenting the poor revenue to the state, the PANDEL candidate made assurances to increase the monthly state IGR to at least N1 billion within 18 months without imposing tax on the people.
“A major crisis facing Ekiti State today is very poor revenue profile. My administration will tackle this headlong and my experience as a banker will be leveraged to achieve this with a very short time.
“We will unlock the dead economic assets of the people by ensuring within 12 months that our people can have C of O on their landed properties which they can use to access credit from banks to do their businesses.
“As at total the total bank credit in Nigeria in Ekiti is less than 0.3 per cent. This is abysmally low. It is only through economic activities of the people that IGR of the state can be boosted without putting tax burden on our people.”