Ekiti State Governor Kayode Fayemi has refuted reports attributed to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, that he (Fayemi) approached him (Atiku) for an economic policy document, following his victory at the last July governorship poll and that he gave him one.
Atiku was said to have made the statement on Thursday at a meeting with the business community in Lagos.
Reaction to the report yesterday in Ado-Ekiti, the state capital, through a statement by his Chief Press Secretary, Yinka Oyebode, the governor said the PDP presidential candidate must have been misquoted and misconstrued in the report of the meeting.
The statement said: “We would like to believe that the former Vice-President was misquoted on this matter, as nothing of such ever happened.
“For the sake of the public, it is important to set the record straight: Governor Fayemi never had any personal encounter with Alhaji Abubakar when he ran for office in 2007 and he could not have asked him for policy ideas then and even in 2018, when he ran for his second term. While Fayemi has always extended usual courtesies to the former Vice-President, the two men have not seen in the last two years.
“Dr Fayemi’s policy document, titled: Making Poverty History in Ekiti State – The Eight Point Agenda, was produced and widely circulated in 2006, a year ahead of the 2007 election. Again, in 2018, his policy document, titled: Reclaiming our Land, Restoring Our Values, containing the four pillars of his agenda, was not a product of any encounter of the former VP.
“As a scholar of democratic governance, policy formulation and articulation is Dr Fayemi’s forte; that probably was the reason he was put in charge of Policy, Strategy and Research in President Muhammadu Buhari’s presidential campaign in 2015, and he delivered on the assignment.”
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