Fayose explains closure of Ekiti speaker’s filling station

Ayodele Fayose, governor of Ekiti state, has dismissed allegations levelled against him by Adewale Omirin, speaker of the state house of assembly.

The speaker, whose T5 Petrol Station was among the four filling stations sealed by the state government on Tuesday, had alleged that the governor ordered the closure of his station because he refused to join the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

In a statement by Wole Olujobi, his media aide, the All Progressives Congress (APC) lawmaker accused Fayose of political intimidation and coercion, insisting that his station was sealed for political reasons.

But responding in a statement of his own, Lere Olayinka, Fayose’s special assistant on information and social media, branded Omirin’s response “the height of mischief and misrepresentation of facts”.

“The speaker does not have legal rights to own private business, and one wonders how someone prohibited by law to own private business while in office can be said to be the owner of a filling station that is under construction,” Olayinka said.

He explained that contrary to the claim by the speaker and the APC, three other petrol stations were also shut down for contravening environmental laws.

He listed other stations shut down as INIS Integrated Services located along Iworoko Road, Ado-Ekiti, belonging to Churchill Adedipe; NIPCO Petrol Station (Morolu Global Services), Isato-Oke in Ado-Ekiti, owned by one Oloko, and PHENROSE Limited, Ajilosun in Ado-Ekiti, belonging to Gilbert Igweka.

Alluding to Code 2 (b) of the Code of Conduct Act, which prohibits public office holders like the speaker from managing or running any private business, profession or trade, the statement said that “those making noise in the media that Dr. Omirin owns a filling station are only trying to throw him inside the web of the code of conduct tribunal, and the noisemakers won’t be available to help him out of the mess they would have put him”.