The Speaker of the Ekiti State House of Assembly, Adewale Omirin, has accused Governor Ayodele Fayose of freezing the bank accounts of the state legislative house.
 
He also expressed worry over alleged “incessant blackmail and intimidation” of the Assembly by the governor over the refusal of the 19 All Progressives Congress, APC, members to defect to the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP.
 
The PDP has seven members in the Assembly.
 
Omirin, who spoke through his special adviser on Media, Wole Olujobi, said that the action of the governor ran contrary to the dictates of democracy.
 
He also described the latest allegation that the Assembly demanded N135 million for the screening of commissioner nominees as a propaganda taken too far, saying that the legislators mentioned in the bribery allegation would seek redress in court, while the broadcasting radio and television stations which published the reports would be sued for libel.

“The standard practice is to present the list of the nominees in the plenary while the nominees will follow with the submission of their credentials. They will be screened before confirmation. The governor sent three nominees on Monday and the list was read in the parliament that day. Since it is a public document, we read the letter on the second day in the plenary. Nobody submitted any credential. We don’t know the nominees.”
 
The Speaker said it was surprising for the governor to expect the House to confirm the nominees as sent, without sighting their credentials or seeing them in person, adding that is was for this reason that Fayose froze the bank accounts of the Assembly.
 
“This is strange in parliamentary conduct. How can you elevate intimidation and blackmail to an art of governance? The Chief Judge was blackmailed that he took a bribe of N20million to stall hearing on local council development areas case and another N200million to reassign the E-Eleven’s perjury case to Justice Olusegun Ogunyemi to return a guilty verdict on the governor. After the judiciary had been blackmailed to submission, it is now the turn of the parliament to be brought to its knees by blackmailing members and freezing the accounts of the House as if the House is a department in the Governor’s Office,” he said.

Omirin also alleged that PDP thugs in the wee hours of Tuesday stormed and ransacked the homes of members of the legislature, after the Assembly pointed out to the governor that the subsisting case on the local government was responsible for the Assembly’s refusal to treat his request for the reconstitution of the local government areas.
 
But Fayose, in a reaction by his chief press secretary, Idowu Adelusi, said the allegations against him were untrue as he has not ordered the freezing of the account of the State House of Assembly.