The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) gubernatorial candidate in Oyo State, Engr Seyi Makinde on Saturday lashed out at the present administration in the state for celebrating payment of N1.68bn to workers in eight years while owing backlog of over N40billion.
Engineer Makinde in a statement from his campaign office and signed by Prince Dotun Oyelade, stressed that such an action could best be described as celebration of failure.
Apparently reacting to a paid advertisement in a national daily, Engineer Makinde said the advertisement was a waste of ” tax payers’ money because majority of the achievements claimed in the publication were couched in falsehood.”
“How can a government celebrate the diversion of all it’s federal allocation in 8 years to the payment of workers salary alone and still manage to owe primary school teachers over N40bn and still leave the salaries of all the seven tertiary Institutions’ striking workers unpaid for up to 10 months”, he said.
The PDP governorship candidate emphasized that ” only a government that has little to show for it will brandish payment of workers salaries and wages as an achievement and make it a campaign issue. Workers salaries are mandatory and a foregone right.”
On the claim of the Governor Ajimobi administration that it has increased car loan to N500,000, and housing loan to N2million, the PDP governorship candidate said ” there is nothing special in these because succeeding administrations have had to review upward following the inflationary trend of the period. Car loans, he observed rose from 20,000, to 40,000, to 200,000 at different periods in the last thirty years.”
While faulting the Governor Ajimobi’s administration on it’s claim that it employed 7000 teachers in 8 years when in actual fact,over 12,000 workers were sacked while court rulings were flagrantly disobeyed. the PDP candidate said he observed that wisely, government did not include construction of roads as one of its achievements because it knew that 80% of vital rural roads that would benefit farmers and rural dwellers were neglected and sacrificed for the few urban roads under construction.
Engineer Makinde maintained that anyone who insists in following this legacy will be roundly defeated in the coming elections.
