CRIMINAL MASTERMIND: HOW GOV. FAYEMI AWARDED OVER N6.6 MILLION FOR REDESIGN AND HOSTING OF STATE WEBSITE TO GHOST SECRETARY

Secret Reporters

Kayode Fayemi, the present Governor of Ekiti state under the banner of the All Progressive Congress (APC) and one time Minister of Solid Minerals Development (MSMD) appears to be endowed with the traits of embezzling public funds as he may have gained intelligence in using strategic means of creating characters that don’t exist just like a movie director to enrich himself to the detriment of the welfare of the citizens.

According to section 38 of the Fiscal Responsibility Act of Ekiti State, “the government shall ensure its fiscal and financial affairs are conducted in a transparent manner and shall ensure full and timely disclosure and wide publication of its financial statement’.

Reports indicate that this law may have been violated by Olukayode Fayemi by creating an imaginary structure to gulp over N6.6 million under the guise of a website redesign and hosting.        

The information available to SecretReporters shows that the Ekiti state government dispensed exactly N5.882.352.93 (Five Million Eight Hundred and Eighty-two Thousand, Three Hundred and Fifty-Two Naira, Ninety Three Kobo) to redesign the state’s website and also awarded a contract worth N783. 500.00 (Seven hundred and Eighty-Three thousand, five hundred Naira) to the ‘executive secretary’ for the sites’ annual hosting from February 2019 to February 2020.

Financial diggings embarked on by experts of Dataphyte to reveal who the mysterious ‘executive secretary’ is and why the exorbitant contract met a brick wall as the Chief Press Secretary to the Ekiti State Government, Yinka Oyebode when questioned about it denied knowledge of any secretary’s involvement in the aforementioned contract. In a phone interview, the spokesman claimed that there is no such thing as an Executive Secretary in the administration, even if there is, the government will not be confident to put it on the public portal, rather they will use their company’s name, “I think there is a mix up somewhere, you can talk to the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP)” he said.

Similarly, the Director-General of Ekiti State Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP) Mr. O’Seun Odewale, when quizzed on the cost of the project, stated that “I cannot answer such question only if you can submit an FOI because I believe there is a mix up somewhere. The project falls into the reach of direct labour and naming the contractor as the executive secretary will be a mischaracterization because the contract was given to Whogohost. It should be noted that the executive secretary is the accounting officer of the agent, and it is impossible for the project to be awarded to the accounting office”, he said

Bewildered by their denial of the non-existing ‘Executive Secretary and the hyper-inflated pricing which is over 1000% for redesigning and about 163% for the hosting, Davis Igwe a website designer was consulted to review the site. After his review, he disclosed that “Whogohost hosting cost falls within N1,600 (One Thousand Six Hundred Naira) to N4000 (Four Thousand Naira) per month for 12 months. While their design plan starts at N50,000 (Fifty Thousand Naira) and can go higher, jumping to N5,000,000 (Five Million Naira) so the state government should not have spent more than N500,000 (Five Hundred Thousand Naira) seeing that the site is simple and it does not have much traffic”.

To verify the N783,000 (Seven Hundred and Eighty-Three Thousand Naira) contract awarded to the so-called ‘Executive Secretary’, Samson Opeyemi, a freelance web designer described the payment for the website’s hosting as ‘impossible’. He further explained that the site is not workable and some parts like the website’s home slider and the Flickr album gallery are not functional, the menu command does not function on mobile and the website was built on WordPress. “An average hosting plan would cost $20 which when converted to Naira is N7600 (Seven Thousand Six Hundred Naira) per month and the purchase of a WordPress theme cannot be over $100 which is about N38,000 in Nigeria (Thirty-Eight Thousand Naira).

Indigenes of Ekiti State have since been clamoring for a proper investigation on the activities of these criminal masterminds in the state as many opined that Gov. Fayemi bears the full responsibility of such embezzlement.