Ekiti, APC disagree on why worker committed suicide

Ekiti State Government and the All Progressives Congress (APC) have disagreed on why a civil servant, Tope Afolayan, committed suicide at his Olorunda area of Ado Ekiti.

While the APC blamed the state government for non payment of salaries and allowances despite the bail-out given to the state by the Federal Government, the state government said the current recession, which has reduced the purchasing power of naira should be blamed for the hardship being experienced by all Nigerians.

The state government also expressed regrets that the Federal Government seems not to have a clue to arresting southward trends of the economy, which was blamed for the tragic incident.

Afolayan, a Grade Level 12 officer in the office of the State Accountant General and final year law student of the Ekiti State University, Ado-Ekiti, hanged himself last Thursday after alleged bouts of family responsibility failures and debts repayment defaults.

The party’s Publicity Secretary, Taiwo Olatunbosun, also blamed the unfortunate incident on the governor who, he said, collected money to pay workers’ salary arrears but allegedly kept the money in private accounts to yield interests.

But the Chief Press Secretary to the governor, Mr. Idowu Adelusi who described the incident as tragic and unfortunate said, “Though the death of the civil servant was unfortunate and the government is sad about it, none payment of salary as insinuated cannot be the cause of the suicide.

“The pain caused by the economic recession of the Buhari administration is responsible for the civil servants’ death.

“Some months back when regular payment of workers salary by the state government became difficult due to the obnoxious economic policies of the Buhari administration and plundering of the state by the immediate past APC – led government, this particular civil servant did not hang himself then.

“Why is it now that regular payment of workers salary has returned to the state.

What in this circumstance can make a worker to hang himself? Depression caused by the policies of the Buhari administration is responsible for the death. This is because the purchasing power of the salary has reduced totally due to continuous fall of naira to the dollar, ‘’he stated.