Ekiti state governor, Ayodele Fayose, has accused the Federal Government of ‘compromising’ former Minister of State for Defense, Senator Musiliu Obanikoro in order to get him at all cost.
Fayose described Obanikoro’s voluntary return to the country to face the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission as stage-managed to nail him.
Obanikoro had reportedly confessed to the EFCC investigators that he transferred N2.3billion to Fayose from the Office of the National Security Adviser to fund his 2014 election.
The governor, in a statement on Wednesday by his Special Adviser on Public Communication and New Media, Lere Olayinka, said the report was a desperate plot by government to implicate him at all cost.
Obanikoro has been in EFCC custody since Monday facing interrogation over alleged fraudulent receipt of funds from ONSA.
Fayose has however dismissed Obanikoro’s alleged confession, saying it was the commission’s usual media trial.
This project ‘Fayose must be implicated at all cost’ will definitely not put food on the tables of Nigerians and for all I care, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and its collaborators can keep running from pillar to post while I keep delivering good governance to Ekiti and its people,” he said.
“We have gone past this stage of media trial, EFCC should rather keep its gun powder dry, when we get to the bridge, we will cross it. They said more than this in the 2006 poultry scam blackmail, despite that, I am the governor today.”
While noting that his reaction to the report was only “to fulfill all righteousness,” the governor said “those who arranged the dramatic and compromised return of Senator Obanikoro to Nigeria obviously did so in continuation of their project ‘Fayose must be implicated at all cost.”
He continued: “As far as I am concerned, I am busy here in Ekiti attending to the welfare and well-being of my people. I won’t be distracted.
“Since we are now in the era in which financial assistance from Nigerians to fund elections is being criminalised, the international community, especially those funding EFCC must insist that the commission probes the funding of APC elections before further funds are released to the commission.”
