By Magnus Effiong/Princewill Kingston
Crisis is brewing at the headquarters of the Cross River Basin Development Authority (CRBDA) located in 8 miles, Calabar, over the reported theft of MF 275 tractor belonging to the Authority.
Besides, the CRBDA workers, weekend, blocked the main entrance to the Basin Authority headquarters in protest over alleged non-payment of their three years promotion arrears as well as illegal deductions from their monthly salaries.
The management said the federal government’s Integrated Payroll and Personal Information System (IPPIS) was the culprit.
PillarToday’s investigations indicated that the tractor was stolen since last October, and while Basin Authority’s management is accusing the works superintendent officer II (mechanic), Mr. Mission Udo Daniel, of stealing the tractor, Daniel is pointing accusing fingers at a top management official, saying the official was seeking to use him as a scapegoat.
Checks showed that the management, after discovering that the tractor was missing, had issued a query to Mr. Mission Daniel who, in his response, denied having any knowledge of the whereabout of the tractor.
The Basin authorities later got him arrested with the Police arraigning Daniel in Suit No. MC/188C/2024 between the Inspector-General of Police vs Mr Mission Daniel.
The matter, which came up for hearing at the Chief Magistrate Court along Garden/Eyo Edem axis of old Calabar, penultimate week, was adjourned to October 22, 2024 with some management staff expected to tell Chief Magistrate E.A Orim, what they know about the missing tractor.
The accusations and counter accusations are generating tension among the workforce with some allegedly taking sides.
In an interview, the head of the security unit, Mr Simon Ikon, who is said to have released the tractor, said the operator of the missing tractor, Mr Daniel, had on October 6, 2023, approached him with a letter allegedly signed by Mr Inyang Umana, an Agric Officer and an aide to the Managing Director, Engr Bassey Nkposong, authorizing the release of the tractor.
Ikon said Daniel, accompanied by two other men, approached him with the said authorization letter, tractor’s ignition keys, 30 litres of diesel, a new battery, and told him that the Managing Director had directed the release of the tractor, a directive which he obeyed despite warning from the Deputy Director, (mechanic) Mr Effiong Umoren Otu.
“Mission Daniel came with two people who are not our staff one Friday evening last October. He showed me a letter signed by Umana and told me the MD sent those boys to come and take the tractor to Bakassi.
“I told him it was too late to take the tractor to that distance and that he should come the following day being Saturday but he insisted on going with the tractor, and because of his insistence, I told him that we should go and meet Engr Umoren who is in charge of workshop.
“Two of us met Engr Umoren with the letter and he advised that the tractor should not be released until a duplicate copy of the said letter is made available for record purposes but right before Engr Umoren, Mission begged and insisted that if that tractor is not released that evening MD will be very angry with him.
“When we came back to where those two boys were waiting for us, Mission continued to beg. By this time all the business centres had closed for the day. He promised that he would bring the letter first thing in the morning for us to photocopy.
“Since he is the operator of that tractor and has been our staff for years, I trusted him and allowed him to go with the tractor and the authorization letter which he said he will bring back for us to duplicate.
“When I called him the following morning to bring the letter, he said he was not in possession of the letter. Since then, till now, Mission has refused to bring back the tractor,” he told our reporter.
The man, who purportedly authored the said authorization letter, Mr Inyang Umana, also spoke to PillarToday.
In a chat, Mr Umana vehemently denied any knowledge of the letter, saying as at the time of the said transaction, he was in Abuja with his sick father who was hospitalized and later died, and that the MD was equally in Abuja that same period.
His words: “this is very funny. I did not write any letter authorizing the movement of tractor from Basin to anywhere. I was not even in Calabar. I got permission from the MD to take my late father to Abuja for medical treatment.
“When I came back to Calabar and resumed work, a colleague of mine told me, ‘look, the tractor you approved to be removed has not been returned.’ That was when my attention was drawn to the whole development. I called the Chief Security Officer to confirm what I was told and to ask for the letter they said I signed.
“He told me the letter was still with Mission. We had to go and meet Mission and he told us he has not seen the letter. I then called the Union Chairman to inform him that Mission was at it again. Something of this nature had occurred in the recent past. This is not the first time Mission Daniel was involved in this type of scenario.
“He is the operator of that tractor. He was the one who was using it to work for clients based on clearance from Agric services. There was a time Mission took the tractor out, without clearance from anybody, to Oban under the guise he was test -running the tractor after a repair. He got involved in an accident and left the tractor at the accident scene.
“When management got wind of what happened, my Boss, the MD, directed me to proceed to Oban with Mission to see the condition of the tractor. It was immobile so we made an arrangement with the host community to keep the tractor safe.
“When we got back there after a few weeks, this same man had surreptitiously gone back to Oban and moved the tractor. We don’t know how he was able to move the immoveable tractor to a faraway Adim in Biase local government area. We went back and behold there was no tractor to be found, it was the people who told us it was Mission who came back and moved the tractor.
“The management later got information on who Mission hired the tractor to. The MD sent a message to the man that if the tractor is not returned, it would become a criminal case, and that was how we got the tractor back.
“So, that was why I called the Union Chairman since he was involved in the other matter of Mission moving the tractor from Oban to Adim. Mission is a member of the Union. What surprised us was that Mission moved that tractor to Adim without a key. He knows how he manipulated the engine to come to life.”
Efforts to convince Mr Mission Daniel to speak with our reporter proved abortive. He said he was barred from speaking to the media since the matter was pending in court, and therefore directed PillarToday to his lawyer, Barr. Ayei Okpa who, incidentally is the Country Director of an NGO – Rescue Support Initiative (RSI).
Speaking to our reporter on phone on behalf of his client, Barrister Okpa posited that the Basin management was attempting to victimize Mr. Mission Udo, and alleged complicity of both the Managing Director and some top management staff.
Barrister Okpa said: “This is a fraudulent attempt by some management staff of the Basin Development Authority to continue the misappropriation of government’s equipment and then look for scapegoats.
“We were in court yesterday and the whole cascade of falsehood is crumbing. We have gone as far as recovering a major component of the tractor, the bucket, from the MD’s farms. He connived with the Chief Security Officer and some staff in that place. We will take them to EFCC and ICPC. All of them will be cross-examined in court and we will retrieve that tractor from whosoever stole it.
“They want to rob in Mr Mission Daniel, an innocent man, who even advised that the Deputy Director be contacted for his opinion before the Chief Security would release the tractor.
“Mission did not come with the two boys, he was just passing by when he saw people at the car park and since he is the tractor operator, he went close to inquire of what was happening. He was actually going to see a tailor who was preparing his father’s burial cloth when he saw them.
“They are trying to use Mission as a fall guy because he had, in his response to a query, remarked that the tractor was stolen because the MD was no more following due process in managing the Basin Authoriy.”
But the Managing Director, Engr Nkposong, disagreed, saying allegation of finding tractor’s bucket in his farms at Akpabuyo was funny as he had been operating his farms with many tractors and buckets long before he became CRBDA Managing Director.
Nkposong said people were just bent on tarnishing his image and hard-earned reputation with such allegation and vowed that he would unravel the circumstances behind the disappearance of the said tractor.
Also speaking, a director, who preferred anonymity described the allegation of the tractor’s bucket in Nkposong’s farms as an act of deep ignorance and high level of misinformation.
“When you go to buy a tractor, they sell the tractor without a bucket, arrow or a plow. They are not attached as components. You could decide to buy either of them depending on what you want to use the tractor for. They are bought separately.
“Buckets are not attached to tractors at points of sale. For instance, we have buckets here which we could attached to any tractor depending on what job we want to use the tractor to do. A particular tractor could have arrow or bucket behind depending on the job at hand. There is nothing like a particular tractor’s bucket which could be identified,” he posited.
Analysts said the case promises to witness a display of interesting legal fireworks as the Federal Government seeks to recover its missing tractor.
As if that was not enough trouble for the Authority, workers are calling the management out over the payment of their 2017, 2018 and 2020 promotion arrears and are demanding an end to illegal deductions from their salaries as union dues.
Comrade Joseph Etim, the branch Chairman of the Nigeria Union of Agriculture and Allied Employees (NUAAE), lamented that despite the management setting up a committee over the matter, nothing tangible had come out of it, and therefore appealed to the Minister of Water Resources to come to the aid of CRBDA workers.
In a response, Dr Jackson John, who chaired the said Committee, found fault with the manner the issue was presented and noted that his committee, which included Union members, had gone to Abuja to unravel why the arrears were owed.
His words: “The Union drew the attention of management to arrears being owed. Some people even insinuated that the person who was the accountant misappropriated it. I am also being owed the said arrears.
“The MD had to set up a committee, headed by me to find out what was actually happening. Every worker knows that since the establishment of Integrated Payroll and Personal Information System (IPPIS) by the federal government, the issue of payment of salaries, arrears and everything monetary were relieved from all ministries, department and agencies and are now under the purview of the IPPIS.
“A representative of the Union, that is NUAAE, and two other staff went with us to IPPIS Office in Abuja. At the IPPIS office, we were told that truly, we have not been paid the said arrears. It was there we found out clearly that most agencies had not been paid the said arrears. We were informed of MDAs and even some other River Basins that had not received their arrears yet.
“When we came back, we summoned the workers and Union leaders to inform them of the outcome of our trip to Abuja. Two things were established; number one was that the person accused of stealing the money dd not steal it, and number two was that our staff arrears were still pending but duly documented.
“People can go to IPPIS office and verify this. I am surprised that some persons are heating the system as if someone has taken their money. This is not correct,” he stated.
