Posted on: 07:06 Wed, 14 Oct 2015



Kayode Fayemi, the immediate past governor of Ekiti state has outlined how
important it is to close the gap between
the rich and the poor in Nigeria.

Fayemi talked about the gap in social
class during his interview on the floor of
the senate as a ministerial nominee earlier today.

“Poverty is clearly deep in our country.

If you look at our manifesto, we put it at
a figure of about 110 million Nigerians
who live below the two dollar per day
margin in our country.

“It is not really poverty, it is inequality.
You cannot have progress in any country, where one per cent of the population controls 80 per cent of the resources.

“The second issue to tackle, which I believe our government is taking head
long is corruption.

“The amount of leakages in the system in
our country is unacceptable and we need
to do something fundamental about it.
“Leadership by example would have to
be where to start. We need to reduce significantly the recurrent expenditure
in our country.

“We also need to ensure that crime is
linked to sanctions so that impunity will
not continue to drive the country deeper
and deeper into poverty” the ex-governor said.

Kayode Fayemi has discussed extensively
on the topic of diversifying the economy
and job creation.

He further added:

“I met obligations in excess of 30 billion
naira to banks, to contractors, to a range
of people that government owed; and I
took it in my stride.

“Completed virtually all the projects
started by the Oni administration; paid
off the bulk of the outstanding obligations to contractors and then we moved on.

“As governor, I borrowed; but it is not in
the range of what has been bandied.”