From Wole Balogun, Ado Ekiti

Ekiti State Governor, Kayode Fayemi, has denied reports in the media, credited to the former vce president and presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, that he (Fayemi) had, upon his election, last year July, approached him (Atiku) for an economic policy document and he obliged him.

Atiku was said to have made the statement, during a meeting he had with the business community in Lagos, last Thursday.

Fayemi, who countered the claims in a statement made available to newsmen, yesterday, in Ado Ekiti, the state capital, through his Chief Press Secretary (CPS), Yinka Oyebode, said the PDP presidential candidate must have been misquoted in the report of the meeting.

He 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 vice president 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.

“Fayemi’s policy document ‘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 – Reclaiming our land, restoring our values, containing the four pillars of his agenda was not a product of any encounter of the former vice president. 

“As a scholar of democratic governance, policy formulation and articulation is Fayemi’s forte and that probably was the reason he was put in charge of policy, strategy and research in the President Muhammadu Buhari’s presidential campaign in 2015, and he delivered on the assignment.

“While we would like to believe Atiku was misquoted and treat this as one of those social media exaggerations, if he actually made the allegations at the meeting, as reported, then it is unfortunate and unbecoming of a politician desirous of occupying the highest office in the land,” he said.