Guardian / Nigeria: The Ekiti State House of Assembly has pressed further its running battle against the Minister of Solid Minerals, Dr Kayode Fayemi, ordering the Inspector General of Police, Mr. Ibrahim Idris, to arrest him for allegedly misappropriating N40 billion of state funds when he held sway as governor.
The chamber also directed the state Commissioner of Police, Mr. Wilson Inalegwu and other security agencies, including the International Police (Interpol), to immediately arrest Fayemi.
At a press conference yesterday in Ado Ekiti, the speaker, Kola Oluwawole as well as chairman, House Committee on Information, Samuel Omotoso and Leader, Tunji Akinyele, said the warrant was to afford the minister the opportunity to clarify some of the allegations of profligacy brought against him.
Omotoso alleged that the former governor had continually spurned the assembly’s summons in breach of Section 1(1) of the 1999 Constitution which empowered the House to summon serving or former officers of the state.
However, the state chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) described the order as a joke taken too far.
In a statement, the party’s state spokesman, Taiwo Olatunbosun, described the lawmakers as a “set of idle certificate forgers who are being pushed into issuing a bench warrant against Fayemi by Governor Ayodele Fayose who has usurped their powers by declaring himself the speaker of the House of Assembly.”
Olatunbosun challenged the lawmakers to move freely in Ado Ekiti or at their constituencies, noting: “Most of them are in hiding in the Government House because security agents are looking for them to answer charges of certificate forgery and so, it is baffling that suspected criminals wanted for certificate forgery would be the ones being lined up by the governor to help him divert attention from alleged serial crimes by issuing arrest warrant on an innocent man over trumped-up charges.
“We wonder when it becomes the lot of fugitives to sit in judgment to persecute an innocent, law-abiding citizen and a responsible leader like Fayemi.”
