REVEALED: Fayose, Access Bank In Traffic Offence Fines Payment Racket

REVEALED: Fayose, Access Bank In Traffic Offence Fines Payment Racket

In yet another fraud bang in a series of sharp practices to defraud Ekiti people, Governor Ayodele Fayose is in the news again in a fraud ring involving Access Bank where Ekiti traffic offenders pay cut-throat fines into an account that has no number or name identity.
The Monitors gathered from impeccable sources in the Government House that the governor clears the traffic offenders' fines cash lodged in Access Bank every Friday to throw lavish weekend party in the Government House with a select number of friends and "imported" women from Ghana and South Africa.
The modus operandi in the sharp practice involves issuing a blank Access Bank tellers to the arrested traffic offenders at the office of the Ekiti State Traffic Management Agency (EKSTMA) on Ajilosun Street in the state capital.
The teller bears neither account name nor number. Offenders are issued this Access Bank blank teller for payment in the bank's office. Waiting in the banking hall to receive the teller is a particular officer who knows the account into which payments should be credited. When this particular officer is not in the office, paying offenders must wait long hours until the officer returns to the office. It is this officer only who knows which account the payments should be credited.
After payment, the offenders return the stamped tellers that still neither indicate account number nor name to EKSTMA office for acknowledgement of payment of fines. After due acknowledgement, the offenders take a clearance note issued from the front desk of the agency for the release of seized vehicles.
The Monitors has since discovered that the Access Bank account belongs to the governor, which this particular officer in the bank manages for him.
Sources told The Monitors that one bank officer who first attempted to blow the whistle on this fraud last year had been transferred from Ado-Ekiti branch of the bank.
It was also learnt that to cover the whole racket in utmost secrecy, Fayose put his trusted aide, Ariyo Afolabi, in charge of the management of the agencies that impose fines on offenders.
Ariyo, Fayose's cousin from the governor's home town in Afao-Ekiti, is the Special Assistant to the Governor on Traffic and Environmental Management. His duty is to ensure that all traffic and environmental laws offenders are punished through payment of outrageous fines. A driver who parks by the roadside is fined N10,000. This was particularly so when the traffic management agency had not marked off parking restriction lines on the roads in the state capital.
The sharp practices also exist in the payment of fines for environmental offences where Ariyo also holds sway. Here, fines are paid into an account that has neither name nor number.
In the last few months, activities of Ariyo's agencies have increased in both tempo and ferocity with Ekiti people sweating to pay outrageous fines to the pleasure of the governor. Markets are routinely raided while chairs, tables and wares of the traders carted away only to be released on the payment of fines while vehicles are impounded on unmarked roads and towed to the EKSTMA office for payment of fines.
For the reasons best known to him, dealer of NNPC petrol station along Bank Road, Ado-Ekiti, Mr Gilbert, supplies fuel to some EKSTMA vehicles free of charge, yet Ariyo and his men pass the bill to the government for reimbursement for the fuel supplied by Mr Gilbert free of charge.
Before Fayose came on a second raid on Ekiti treasury with maximum burden on the residents, the practice under former Governor Kayode Fayemi was to make all payments, including fines, electronically into a government account in the Tax Office of the state Treasury Department located in the old Governor's Office off Oke Ori Omi in Ado-Ekiti.
After payment, a small receipt electronically generated would be issued to the depositors and cash amount electronically transferred into the government's account boldly written on entrances to the tax office in the Treasury Department for the information of the public.
But in EKSTMA and Environmental Sanitation agency's cases, the Access Bank teller neither bears the number nor the name of the account owner. The account numbers for EKSTMA and Environmental agencies also do not exist in the Tax Office.
The Monitors alerts EFCC, DSS and ICPC to beam their searchlights on these agencies to unravel details of this mindless fraud and wickedness against Ekiti people.
THE MONITORS
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