TheCable

The Ekiti state chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) says Ayodele Fayose, governor of Ekiti, has taken ignorance to a ridiculous level.

On Monday, Ekiti barred Kayode Fayemi, minister of mines and steel development, from holding public office in the state for 10 years.

The government based its action on the report of the judicial commission of inquiry, which indicted the minister over alleged mismanagement of the state’s finances between 2010 and 2014.

But Fayemi has described the restriction as a “big joke.”

In a statement on Tuesday, Taiwo Olatunbosun, spokesman of the APC in the state, said neither Fayose nor the state government could bar Fayemi from holding public office only a competent court of law.

Olatunbosun said the governor is the person to be banned from public office because of alleged financial misappropriation.

“His so-called white paper is not only laughable but also a disgrace to all Ekiti people home and abroad with the way that Fayose has taken ignorance, vendetta and debauchery to a ridiculous level because we knew all along that this is what Fayose wanted to do,” the statement read.

“We had expected his attorney-general, if he knows his onions, to have advised him that only a competent court of law can bar Nigerians from holding public office under the Nigerian constitution.

“A situation where Fayose assembled PDP members and pliable civil servants as a panel with a strict directive to indict Fayemi at all costs and thereafter issue a White Paper banning him from holding public office cannot hold water in a society where the law works.

“With the way he is conducting himself desperately to stop Fayemi from holding public office, we are convinced that Fayose is seriously going through a political haemorrhage and therefore his resorting to political desperation and unconstitutional means to nail our leader and a serving minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria by any means possible.

“Neither Fayose nor Ekiti state government has the power to bar or prevent Dr Fayemi or any other citizen from holding public office but a competent court of law. Such wishful thinking cannot stand judicial scrutiny and we advise Fayose and his pitiable undertakers to read the supreme court judgment and Atiku Abubakar in a similar matter.

“This is executive recklessness and political rascality taken too far by Fayose and his kangaroo panel. We wonder where he got the power to bar a leading member of the opposition in a democracy.: