Death threat to labour activists, Baby lions missing from National Zoo
…Staff guilty of gross misconduct rewarded with juicy promotion
Beneath the façade of peace since the exit of Dr. Joseph Eboreime as Director General of the National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM) in September 2009, crises have been simmering at Nigeria’s house of culture.
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| Lion inside National Zoo, Jos. PHOTOS: MAURICE ARCHIBONG |
Although national museums’ management had successfully kept the lid on its problems for over a year, unguarded utterances by Messrs Ali Saje and Garba Haruna have finally toppled the proverbial applecart, detonating crises that were for roughly two years just waiting to explode.
One of the problems giving NCMM Management members sleepless nights has to do with MOTNA (Museum of Traditional Nigerian Architecture) located within Jos Museum complex. A few top brasses of the NCMM are at their wits’ end to explain how tens of millions of naira could have been spent on maintenance of a replica of Kano City wall year after year without success. Every year, for about five years, money was disbursed for the maintenance of MOTNA’s Kano City Wall; but, it would seem that the more resources that were poured into that project, the more the wall was determined to collapse.
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| Lioness at Kano Zoo. |
In the end, following growing public interest in this never-ending-story, the NCMM decided to build a hanger over the wall to shield it from elements. But, this additive is not only ostensibly incongruous; it has further raised curiosity over why the NCMM headquarters refuses to cede maintenance of MOTNA’s structures to the Centre for Earth Construction Technology (CECTECH), one of its arms based in Jos; which, given its mandate and technocrats’ expertise, would make a better job of it.
Moreover, the NCMM runs an Institute of Archaeology and Museums Studies (IAMS) in Jos. The IAMS is under the NCMM’s Department of Educational and Training Services, and; for decades, museum workers sent there to study were usually paid certain allowances. However, IAMS alumni, who graduated in 2008 and 2009 were denied this benefit, even though millions of naira were budgeted for that purpose.
Activists claimed the money was actually spent, but not for the purpose for which it was earmarked in the budgets’ sub-head. But, in reaction to agitation by the short-changed students, NCMM authorities would further victimize them through denial of promotion because of what local bigwigs considered undue effrontry.
Aside this alleged misappropriation or diversion of students’ allowances, the NCMM is also embroiled in controversy over promotions that were carried out three years ago. Supposed beneficiaries claimed the exercise was a hoax because, whereas dozens of workers were promoted on paper, in reality; they got neither official notification nor salary increments that should normally arise from such elevation.
Amid these lingering controversies, as if to further fuel a raging inferno; two museum labour activists were visited with death threats. Ali Saje is an aide of the current NCMM DG, Mr. Yusuf Abdallah Usman; while Garba Haruna is the husband of an NCMM employee in charge of National Zoo, Jos; and, both men are alleged to have issued verbal death threats to labour activists, Messrs Adogah A. Abdullahi and Bongo Bassey.
Abdullahi is National Secretary, NCMM Chapter of the Amalgamated Union of Public Corporations, Civil Service Technical and Recreational Services Employees (AUPCTRE) in Abuja, while Bassey is Chairman of AUPCTRE at National Museum Jos.
A letter dated July 14, 2011 and addressed to the NCMM DG, from Messrs CheOyinAtunba; solicitors to Mr. Abdullahi, is one proof that things are far from well at the NCMM. In the said letter, a copy of which was sent to the Deputy Inspector General of Police, Zone 7 Command, Abuja as well as the acting General Secretary of AUPCTRE, Mr. P. E. Agbonikonkon; among others, Mr. Abdullahi’s lawyers demanded “prompt response from Mallam Yusuf Abdallah Usman to save Mr. Adogah Abdullahi’s life and to also prevent any action likely to cause a breach of peace”.
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| Left: Comrade Adogah Abdullahi during a 2009 rally. |
During a chat with Daily Sun, Abdullahi said this particular aide of the NCMM DG had confronted him within the headquarters of the commission, where Saje allegedly warned him to send a letter of apology to the DG over a memo to the museums’ chief, which he had signed on behalf of labour activists.
Although that memo, dated July 5 and titled The need to avert industrial unrest/declaration of trade dispute in the National Commission for Museums and Monuments, was addressed to the DG, NCMM; Saje, apparently after reading it, became so miffed that he allegedly warned Abdullahi to withraw it and issue a letter of apology to Usman or prepare for the worst.
Abdullahi told Daily Sun he had serious reasons not to take Saje’s threat lightly because the latter had warned him, by saying; “remember what happened to Decker”. The Decker in question is the late Comrade David Olufemi Decker, who reportedly died in a car crash along the Abuja-Jos road in February 2010.
Decker was for many years, Secretary of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Council of AUPCTRE. And, an epitaph written in a condolence register after Decker’s passage by another labour activist, Rabi Momoh, clues one in on how pugnacious this late AUPCTRE scribe was. Comrade Momoh aptly hit the nail on the head through the remark, “Decker was an aggressive fighter”.
In deed, Decker was a classic thorn in the flesh for high-ranking bureaucrats/politicians suspected to be involved in corruption or breach of civil service rules and regulations. And, everyone; it seemed, had taken his reported death in a car crash as the will of God; until Mr. Saje’s reported threat to Abdullahi.
Within the same week as Saje allegedly threatened Abdullahi, it came to light that Mr. Bassey of National Museum Jos had been similarly harassed by Mr. Haruna; whose wife, Rahina is head of the local National Zoo.
Not the first time
It could be recalled that museum labour activists had been threatened in late 2009 when they alleged that plans had been perfected to misappropriate N300 million budgeted and released for the rehabilitation of select National Museums across the country. That particular crisis was reported in the October 15, 2009 edition of Daily Sun (Travels) under the title; Kidnap, acid-bath threats over N300m Museums funds.
The contents of a letter addressed to the then Minister of Tourism, Culture and National Orientation; Senator Bello Jibrin Gada, dated October 6, 2009 and signed by Mr. Abdullahi, had informed the minister of threats of an acid bath, kidnap, maiming and assassination et cetera, received from anonymous callers. Akin to the latest development, copies of that letter had also been sent to the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Tourism, Culture and National Orientation and the NCMM DG, among others.
Some form of calm was later restored at NCMM headquarters, following invitation to the disputants to report at the offices of some security agencies, where they were compelled to make statements.
Background
From head of zoo, Mrs. Rahina Haruna was once deployed to work at the Institute of Archaeology and Museum Studies, but she never showed up there for months. When she eventually did, it was with a letter that she was embarking on maternity leave. She did go on leave and no questions were asked as to why she did not assume duty at her new workplace for months.
To the annoyance of obedient museum workers, the woman would later be promoted, instead of being punished for her insubordination. Critics of the Abdallah Usman-led NCMM Management see this woman’s elevation as a peculiar reward: “It is either due to a special relationship or for outstanding indiscipline”, was one museum staffer’s interpretation.
The bad blood toward Mr. Bassey from Mr. Haruna probably flows from weighty allegations of gross misconduct and impropriety levelled against the latter’s wife over the years. As local labour chairman, Bassey had had cause to join issues with NCMM Management over perceived high-handedness on the woman’s part and seeming preferential treatments she enjoyed.
For example, Rahina; as the woman is fondly called, was keeper of the zoological garden within Jos Museum complex; when two baby lions practically vanished in 2008. Instead of being queried, museum insiders were shocked by what they saw as desparate efforts to conceal the specimens’ disappearance.
Reacting to alarms raised by union activists over the loss of the cubs, NCMM fat cats had explained that the animals were exchanged for other exhibits from Kano Zoo. In response, critics of the then NCMM DG had described this explanation as “blatant falsehood”.
Interestingly, after two visits to Kano by this writer and tours of Kano Zoo, which is under the ambit of Kano State Zoological Garden and Wildlife Management Agency; we had returned to inform the then NCMM DG, Dr. Eboreime and Mr. Usman, then Director of NCMM’s Department of Monuments, Heritage and Sites; that none of the felines we saw there came from Jos Zoo.
In deed, local workers we engaged in conversations through our guide also confirmed there was no lion at Kano Zoo that came from Jos Museum. When we sought further clarification from Kano Zoo General Manager, Mallam Musa Kwalli, the man had invited us back “at another time”. Our latest visit was on a Friday and the GM was apparently looking forward to Jumaat. Likewise, our encounter with Mr. Kabir Yusuf, Director of Zoo, during the same visit also drew a blank.
In any case, labour activists alleged that when the missing lions saga would not go away, NCMM top dogs had introduced some animals to Jos Zoo, which they claimed were got as barter for two cubs exchanged with Kano Zoo. Interestingly, when some 80 per cent of these replacements died within 48 hours of arrival at Jos Zoo, antagonists of NCMM fat cats were quick to scoff that the animals were bought from local hunters and rushed to Jos Zoo to mislead the public.
Within Jos Zoo museum circles, the lore is that to conceal the act, some young men were enticed by promises of mouth-watering cash rewards to fetch some wildlife in a jiffy. And, pronto! These untrained hunters had invaded nearby forest areas with guns, cutlasses as well as bows and arrows. At one spot, a group of these interlopers had found a sitatunger suckling its litters, and voila! The amateur hunters had opened fire, shooting into the crowd of mother sitatunger and offspring.
Startled, mother sitantunger had scampered to safety, whereas her litters that had been hit lay dying on the ground. The guns-for-hire had quickly gathered the unweaned animals and rushed to Jos Zoo, where someone had allegedly displayed them as exchange objects. From the way one respondent narrated the capture of these sitatungers, one wondered, if he had installed a time-lapse camera inside some forest in anticipation of the arrival of so-called amateur hunters paid to invade that thicket to capture endangered species.
In any case, we where further told that on arrival at Jos Zoo, the captured sitatungers could not stand and merely lay on the ground, apparently paralysed owing to wounds inflicted on them by the hunters. Barely six hours later, these particular specimens were dead. The following day, all the gazelles and the one hyena that was also purportedly got from Kano Zoo had similarly perished.
The only surviving species of all the wildlife said to have been got in exchange for two baby lions is crown cranes. We saw four of these fowls on different occasions of our numerous visits to Jos Zoo.
As if the missing cubs’ controversy were not enough scandal for one zoo, investigations also revealed that irregular feeding and lack of drugs to treat animals resulted in the death of dozens of exhibits, apart from the fact that many specimens take ill too frequently because the bulk of millions of naira annually remitted to National Zoo, Jos for the feeding of various animals and general maintenance of the place cannot be proved to have been prudently spent.
Interestingly, one of these votes emanate from Nasarawa State treasury. Despite the inexcusably poor standard of living of the average Nasarawa indigene, which throws up countless almajiri kids robbed of their youth as well as a future through lack of education, a former governor of Nasarawa, Alhaji Abdullahi Adamu, acquired and kept exotic pets, the feeding of which gulped millions of naira of state funds annually.
Feelers indicated that Alhaji Adamu’s successor as Nasarawa governor, pressed to do more important things to improve the welfare of the state’s inhabitants, could not accommodate exotic pets in Government House Lafia. As a result, a deal was struck between some officials of Nasarawa State and Jos Zoo, which led to the transfer Adamu’s friends to the Plateau State capital, while money for their feeding will come from Lafia.
To date, the amount collected for these animals’ upkeep remains top secret; for, it would seem the deal was one in which many important members of NCMM Management were completely left in the dark.
As to why Mr. Adamu would spend so much resources on keeping wild animals as domestic pets, the conjecture of one respondent was that in these climes, where political violence is so rampant; some people believe alsatian, rotweiller and other scary dogs were no longer frightening enough to keep assassins at bay.
As a result, hyenas, snakes, lions et cetera are now much sought-after by politicians; who use such to scare prospective attackers or engage marabouts to exploit these beasts for spiritual powers. This, we were told, could also be responsible for the disappearance of baby lions.
Back to Jos Zoo director: critics alleged she was too garrulous and high-handed. At some point, seven zoo workers got official queries in a week. Yet, when it seemed NCMM Management decided to transfer Rahina in order to restore peace at Jos Zoo, the woman simply refused to hand over.
Not surprisingly, this perceived utter disregard to constituted authority sparked rumours about an amorous relationship involving the woman and a certain NCMM director. As if to confirm such special ties, someone who blatantly snubbed management’s letter of redeployment had turned up for promotional interview! Worried that allowing this woman to participate in the exercise would send wrong signals to other staffers, Rahina was not interviewed at the time. However, barely two years later; the woman would be promoted and returned to National Zoo Jos as helmsman!
Since this curio took place after Mr. Usman’s appointment as NCMM DG, we had sought an opportunity to engage the man for explanation. For almost a year Usman would not oblige us. And, determined to play fair by hearing out both sides in this dispute, we could not file our story.
However, the NCMM DG finally granted Daily Sun an interview last July during which he denied any illicit relationship with any staff of the museum. Such amorous affair, he stressed, “would be most condemnable considering that she is a married woman”.
On the issue of Rahina’s promotion, in spite of alleged breach of civil service rules, Usman explained that he asked the woman to stay on as head of Jos Museum’s Zoological Garden because he was not consulted before her transfer. As NCMM Director of Monuments, Heritage and Sites at the time, Usman said he deserved to be informed of Rahina’s transfer, since Jos Zoo was under his purview. He insisted that since there was no memo to him to that effect, he had no option but to advise the woman to ignore the redeployment.
When contacted, during another visit to NCMM headquarters in Abuja; the commission’s Director of Administration and Supplies, Mr. O. A. Alasan; sought to play down on the raging crises. On the issue of death threats, Mr. Alasan, who is also a lawyer; confirmed that management had received a letter from solicitors to Mr. Abdullahi. He also explained that a meeting had been held with the alleged agrieved on the issue. However, he added that a similar complaint had not been received from Mr. Bassey.
When we again reached Bassey over the phone, the Jos Museum AUPCTRE chief confirmed he had neither filed a formal complaint nor contacted his lawyer. He claimed Mr. and Mrs. Haruna had held series of peace meetings with him, were they pleaded that he should not file an official report of the incident.
But, when asked why he had not documented the threat, even if for record purposes only; Bassey’s explanation was that many museum workers witnessed the incident. Apart from this, Bassey added that many other staffers also attended sessions, where Haruna and his wife had apologised profusely to him.
Back to Mr. Alasan and the missing cubs saga: “Personally, I was not aware of this issue of missing lions. It is news to me, but we have had to visit Jos a number of times to addresss other matters”, this Director of Admin and Supplies remarked. It is possible that Mr. Alasan was kept completely in the dark about this development.
Similarly, neither Mr. Nath Mayo Adediran, NCMM Director of Museums; nor Dr. Seyi Hambolu, Director of Research, Planning and Publications had any idea what we were talking about, when we visited their offices and raised the issue of missing lions. The decision to hide such a weighty matter from museums’ directors, observers reckoned; merely reinforced suspicion that there was something fishy about the lost cubs.
Mysteries galore
On Tuesday October 6, 2009 we received calls from many tourists to Lagos Museum
However, none could fault the Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola-led Lagos State Government for sealing up Lagos Museum
Cheeringly, Lagos Museum was reopened the next day, after the NCMM paid N10.25 million to the Board of Internal Revenue as part of the N25.7 million total indebtedness, which arose from incomplete remittances of tax deductions from the salaries of Lagos Museum
However, it became glaring that the embarrassment suffered by the NCMM over the sealing of its Onikan outpost by Lagos tax authorities was a self-made woe; when Mr. Alasan declared: “I commend the Lagos State 4, a final warning was delivered to the museum”.
If Lagos State
On museum workers’ angst over Rahina’s promotion, in spite of the woman’s alleged insubordination; Mr. Alasan explained that this could be due to the fact that no complaint was received at NCMM headquarters from Rahina’s new post reporting her failure to assume duty there. Following the transfer of Rahina Haruna to IAMS, a veterenary surgeon, Dr. Ekwuonu, was directed to take over; but, when Mrs. Haruna would not handover, the new appointee had no report to assume duty with. Curiously, an accountant, Mr. Sabo Bature, was virtually in charge of Jos Zoo at some point.
When we met Bature during one of our trips to Jos, he made serious efforts to explain that things were not that bad there. However, when asked, if corruption and poor management were the reasons so many animals had died and dozens looking so ill; the retort of an obviously irritated Bature was: “Animals die everywhere, so; there is nothing special about animals dying here”!
New litters raise fears of new tricks
Meanwhile, the same lioness, whose babies went missing since 2008; has again given birth to another pair of cubs. Interestingly, plans have reached an advanced stage to exchange these litters with a certain “wildlife marketer” for other species. Not surprisingly, this development has set tongues wagging.
While some critics said it is part of a grand plan to divert attention from the unresolved mystery surrounding the missing cubs of 2008, others suggested that the proposed exchange should be suspended until the terms have been scrutinized by independent assessors to ensure that the nation was not again short-changed on the altar of nepotism.
Miscellaneous
It is worth noting that the issues enumerated above are by no means all of Usman’s woes as NCMM DG. For instance, a letter titled Point of concern and signed by AUPCTRE acting chief scribe, Agbonkonkon, with reference number AUP-NS/ADM/D.55/VOL 111/35 dated June 30, 2011; which was addressed to the NCMM DG; reads inter alia, “In our opinion, your inability to grant annual increment six months after January 2011 is to elicit from the Union and staff of the Commission avoidable Industrial Dispute and reactions. We therefore expect that the increment would be effected unfailingly before July ending”.
This memo was based on the NCMM Management’s perceived indisposition to pay annual increment to its workers. Comrade Agbonkonkon’s three-point letter further stated: “We have to again inform you that staff of the Commission promoted in 2009 and 2010 are yet to be paid their promotion arrears, while some have not been properly placed”.
As things stand, Mallam Abdallah Usman is an embattled man. Badgered from all sides, it is doubtful the man can win, given that he is fighting wars on many fronts.
Epilogue
The NCMM is one of the nine agencies under the Federal Ministry of Tourism, Culture and National Orientation; and, the body began as Nigeria’s Antiquities Service, when it was launched, almost 70 years ago, in April 1943. It is worth noting that, whereas the NCMM had only six chiefs in its first 61 years of existence, this commission threw up seven directors general both in acting and substantive capacities within the last six years.
Now, it would seem that another change is in the offing. Speculation is rife within museum watchers’ circle that in the light of the numerous scams in which certain members of the NCMM Management are embroilled; it is no longer a matter of, whether incumbent Director General Usman shall be asked to go; but when.
By MAURICE ARCHIBONG
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