Gov. Ayodele Fayose |
Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele Fayose, has asked the Federal
Government to fulfill the promises made to the people during their presidential
campaign, stating that his state will not contribute to the school feeding
programme of the All Progressives Congress - led Federal Government.
In a statement issued by his Special Assistant on Public
Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka, said Ekiti and other states in the
country deserved to benefit from the programme without assisting the
federal
government with any 40 per cent counterpart funding.
The governor, who said his state was interested in the
scheme, added that the school feeding programme was purely a contract between
the APC-led Federal Government and Nigerians.
Fayose, pointed out that the states were not consulted when
the APC and the presidential candidate were making those promises.
“Were the States consulted before the APC made the promise
during the presidential campaign? How can you make a promise and win election
on the basis of that promise and now expect States to help you to fulfill the
promise? That to me is fraud!”
“Apart from the fact
that Ekiti State lacked the financial wherewithal to provide counterpart fund
for such a programme, it is the duty of President Muhammadu Buhari and his APC
that won election on the basis of their promise to give free meal to school
pupils to fulfill the promise without placing any burden on other tiers of
government.”
The governor said the APC should rather blame itself for
failing to do a proper study on the practicability of the scheme before
promising Nigerians instead of looking for who to blame for not fulfilling the
school feeding promise.
He said the Federal Government was already looking for an
excuse for the impending failure of the programme by asking states to
contribute 40 per cent to the scheme.
“The federal government knows that 80 per cent of the states
lack the financial will to be able to contribute the 40 per cent counterpart
fund for the programme and the time the programme eventually fails, Nigerians
will be told that it failed because States did not key in to it.
“As for us in Ekiti, we are interested in the programme
because Nigeria belongs to all of us. But we won’t contribute any counterpart
fund because the programme is solely an electoral promise of the APC and we
were never consulted before the promise was made.
“We don’t even have the capability to make any financial
contribution even if it is 10 per cent because our financial condition is such
that we can’t even pay workers salary,” Fayose said.
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