Ekiti State Government has said that President Goodluck Jonathan and the leadership of Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) should be held responsible for the present heightened tension in the state and increased rate of political violence witnessed in the last few weeks
The State Commissioner for Information and Civic Orientation, Mr Tayo Ekundayo in a statement made available to newsmen in Ado-Ekiti,
said that Ekiti state which had witnessed relative peace in the last 3 1/2 years was gradually sliding into chaos and anarchy as a result of
the sudden incursion of the PDP and its controversial candidate into the politics of the state
Ekundayo said the present spate of violence being witnessed in the state was premeditated by the PDP high command as Vice President
Namadi Sambo was reported a couple of months ago in the media to have described the forthcoming Ekiti Gubernatorial polls as a war that must be won at all costs
He noted that it was therefore not a coincidence that the political violence precipitated by the PDP on Sunday June 8th in which lives were lost and properties destroyed during which the OC Mopol and the Commissioner of Police launched a brazen assault on Governor Kayode Fayemi took place while Vice President Namadi Sambo was in town.
Ekundayo explained that if the renewed wave of violence precipitated by the PDP and their cronies in the Labour Party in the last couple of days in the state is meant to deter the people from freely making their choice of Governor in the June 21st poll, the PDP high command has failed as these incidents have further emboldened the people to reaffirm their determination on elacting their own governor without dictation from elsewhere .
The Commissioner also condemned in strong terms a statement credited to President Goodluck Jonathan while campaigning for the PDP candidate last weekend that the development of Ekiti will be hinged on the outcome of the June 21st Elections . ” Is Ekiti no longer a part of the Federation if it is not in the PDP”, he wondered.
He noted that it was regrettable that the President could make such a statement in Ekiti, a state where he recorded the mandatory 25% of the votes cast in the 2011 presidential elections.
Ekundayo posited that the resident’s statement confirms the obvious that the Jonathan administration has been pursuing an agenda of deliberately under developing the state through poor funding of the federal projects in the state and outright abandonment of its responsibilities as contained in the exclusive list of the Nigerian constitution.
The Commissioner also accused the PDP led Federal Government of deliberately holding on to over N10billion expended on Federal Government projects in the state by the Fayemi-administration as part of the grand design by the power-that-be in Abuja to financially incapacitate the state.
While condemning the open partisanship displayed by officers and men of the state command of the Nigerian Police Force (NPF) in the run up to the June 21, 2014 election, Ekundayo called for the immediate redeployment of the Commissioner of Police and the OC Mopol as the duo have obviously been compromised.
Last modified: June 9, 2014
