By Oludamisi Ojo
The Governorship candidate of the Social Democratic Party in Ekiti State, Engr Segun Oni, has charged the leadership of the Nigeria Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE) to resist bribery and vote for their preferred candidate during the June 18 poll.

He accused the State government of making financial advances to NULGE leaders to influence the local government workers not to vote for the SDP governorship candidate in the impending election.

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A pro-Segun Oni group, the Ekiti Build Back Better (EBBB), in a statement, on Wednesday, said part of the alleged grand plots against him had been that the workers were being told that he would sack them if elected governor.
EBBB, which spoke through its spokesman, Idowu Adelusi, quoted Oni to have said that Fayemi “who is owing to the local government workers five months’ salaries” found it more important to conscript the NULGE chairmen “for the dirty job with a whooping sum of N8 million” instead of paying the workers’ salaries.

Oni alleged that the chairmen had been told to go back to their respective councils and tell the workers that SDP was coming with “a policy of operation show your certificate,” in order to retrench workers, among other obnoxious policies.

“Fayemi decided to embark on this shameful blackmail, supposing that Ekiti workers are morons and not wise enough to discern between good and bad governance.

“He promised to pay them some of their arrears before the election, but decided lately to suspend it till after the election.

“The Fayemi-led administration is disturbed by the rapid way its image is going down, a development that has forced the people not to want to have anything to do with the APC governorship candidate, Mr Biodun Oyebaniji, who they have seen as a Fayemi incarnate and continuity of Fayemi’s repressive policies on the workers.

“How can a government elected by the people tell the workers that leave bonus is never a right and payment of salary will always come after legal and illegal deductions have been done with peanuts left which are insufficient to pay the workers, but the same government would rush to blame insufficient allocation from Abuja and the dwindling economy?”

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Adelusi said Ekiti people were now wiser and waiting to use their votes to remove the APC government “and install Segun Oni who they trust because he did it before and his former administration (2007 to 2010) has not been surpassed by the successive administrations.”

There were earlier reports that NULGE had endorsed the candidature of Biodun Oyebanji for the June 18 election, but the PDP and SDP said it was false.

According to them, the endorsement was impossible in the face of several months of unpaid salaries and pensions owed them by the state government.