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A Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Culture and Tourism on Thursday September 4, 2025 engaged in a brawl with a Director in the same ministry which degenerated into physical fight at the Rivers State Secretariat complex
According to eye witnesses at the Secretariat, the scuffle which took civil servants and visitors by surprise, was said to have attracted attention to Block C, which houses the ministry and others.
They said trouble began when the Permanent Secretary (name withheld) allegedly requested the Director of Finance and Accounts (DFA), a lady (name withheld), to transfer the sum of Twenty-two million, two hundred thousand Naira released by the state government to a private account.
The money, sources said, was meant for a special project to be undertaken by three ministries, namely – Culture and Tourism, Agriculture, and Commerce and Industry.
However, the DFA in whose custody the money was domiciled, was said to have turned down the directive of the Permanent Secretary, insisting that only a letter signed by the Permanent Secretaries of the three Ministries involved, would make her transfer the funds to the “special account.” the disagreement degenerated into shouting match before degenerating into a physical fight
Though the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism said to be a pastor of one of the Pentecostal churches in Rivers State remained calm and unruffled, in spite alleged “verbal assaults”, other staff, especially a lady Director in charge of Publication, Research and Statistics in the same ministry, rose to his defence, accusing the DFA of “overstepping her bounds”.
It was learnt that thereafter, both female directors were said to have engaged in fisticuffs, throwing the entire Secretariat into pandemonium. One of the directors was alleged to have inflicted bodily harm on the other as a result of the fight.
Efforts to get the reaction of the state Head of Service, Inyingi Brown, to comment on the show of shame, proved abortive.
