UNITED NATIONS GATE, April 17 – How corrupt is the UN under Secretary General Antonio Guterres? After banned Inner City Press exclusively published a second complaint concerning abuse including of DSA (Daily Subsistence Allowance) by the director of UN Women's regional office of East and Southern Africa, Ms Izeduwa Derex Briggs, we have received more complaints from whistleblowers, continued impunity in UN Women and elsewhere under Guterres despite exposure of blatant corruption.
Now in mid April, this: "in November 2018, Ms Izeduwa publicly made known to the staff that regardless of the grave allegations against her, she will remain the Regional Director of the Office and that she is there to stay due to her connection within the UN hierarchy. Further she coerced some staff including but not limited to those aligned to her to draft a signed statement disassociating themselves from the earlier statement strongly placing her at the centre of mismanagement, abuse of authority, staff intimidation and leadership crisis in UN Women East and Southern Africa Regional Office. As if this is not enough, and in the backdrop of the allegations on the staff first statement, Ms Izeduwa- the Regional Director in an attempt to exhibit contempt on any potential investigative proceedings, has proceeded to recruit an auditor whose brief is specific, precise and unambiguous: to undertake creative accounting in the run up to any potential investigative processes. One Mr. Zachariah Nyakoe – Zachariah.nyakoe@unwomen.org who has previously assisted Ms Izeduwa evade audit queries while in her former work station in Sudan, has been employing the same skills here at the regional office-summoning staff and intimidating them with an intent to have the staff withhold any truth related to any investigative processes. His scope of work is limited to reviewing only files related to the allegations against Ms Izeduwa. In exercise of the imagined authority from Ms Izeduwa, Zachariah Nyakoe has been summoning all staff who play a particular role on the issues touching on Ms Izeduwa, majority of which are travel files, consulting files and partnership files in bid to coach them and give false testimonies to OIOS if at all they invite these staff. Without mentioning that Zachariah Nyakoe has been under the UN Women ESARO payroll since January 2019, the same has been met with utter shock as the recent ejection from the UN Women Nairobi Regional Office and the deactivation of his emails intimate as much-a rogue auditor!
In February 2019, Ms Izeduwa in complete disregard of the existing policies and the Secretary General’s guidelines on what comprises of eminent persons, she defiantly and adamantly ordered the Procurement Officer to book 25 traditional leaders, majority of whom were from Nigeria, on business class tickets to the AU in Addis Ababa attending the launch of the council of traditional leaders thereby making the UN Women East and Southern Africa lose USD 86000 while the rest of the leaders (None Nigerians) 41 of them traveled on economy class. Despite the Director- Management and Administration Division based at the HQ in New York disapproving the use of the business class tickets in line with the travel policy, Ms Izeduwa still proceeded to have the same issued, perhaps motivated by the fact that they are all Nigerians- a country of her origin. While at it, and in continuation of the abuse of power on the part of the now besieged Regional Director, the traditional leaders in their capacities as participants, were given full Daily Subsistence Allowances- Full DSAs and acting in ignorance as to what amounts to full DSAs, they were provided with lunch packages and the same was billed to UN Women. In yet another intriguing event, Ms Izeduwa hired Four (4) consultants to oversee the meeting in Addis Ababa notwithstanding that there were Eleven (11) Staff members flown from Nairobi to Addis Ababa in yet another city where there is a Country Office: - all this was not meaningful as it ended up plundering UN Women resources as these are roles that could be carried out by the country office in providing the logistical and technical support to the mission. On a comparative basis, the first meeting of traditional leaders on ending child marriage and FGM was held in Nairobi in August 13-17 2018 and was attended by 77 participants whose logistical and technical support was excellently provided by only 4 UN Women staff members, on the contrary this one was attended by 56 participants yet 4 consultants, 11 Staff from Nairobi and a number of staff from the Country Office presided over. In essence, the number of staff participating and supporting the event was slightly under 50% of the number of total participants. In order to perfect her retaliation tendencies on staff who she accuses of having reported her for investigations, she has recently pushed for a HR Business Partner-Ms Tamara Cummings-John who was previously the Global Workplace Relations Advisor at UN Women HQ to join the regional office as a HR Business Partner. Ms Tamara Cummings- John is married to Mr. Darren Peters (Operations Manager UN- Women Sudan Country Office). Staff do not trust the new HR Business Partner and would prefer reporting any HR related issues to HQ and other platforms as she has a long standing history of supporting management at the detriment of staff. Madam Executive Director, you should note with great concerns that you have placed the lives of your staff in the hands of a Partner who is not a HR Specialist and has only been a Legal Officer in the Office of the Legal Counsel in the Office of Legal Affairs, as well as working in both the office of the prosecutor in the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the Special Courts for Sierra Leone. Madam Executive Director this previous positions do not in any way give her enlightenment as far as HR is concerned. As a specialist of Human Rights, Ms Tamara has ZERO experience in Human Resource Management and does not understand the fundamental principles of Human Resource Management. Instead, Ms Tamara is in cohorts with Ms Izeduwa, to partner with her in order for her to clean up Ms Izeduwa’s mess. Ms Tamara has adopted a radical, unprofessional and intimidating approach to staff marked by Ms Izeduwa as witnesses of the investigation process against her and has been the guiding princess for Ms Izeduwa on how to handle any investigations process including the recent internal auditor hired to undertake creative accounting for Ms Izeduwa. To show the collusion, Mr Darren Peters was recruited by Ms Izeduwa who is a close ally of Ms Tamara and who in turn ensured that Ms Tamara is transferred from UN Women HQ to UN Women Regional Office for East and Southern Africa. Madam Executive Director are you confident that 3 your staff are safe in such hands? We request that you protect whistle blowers and staff who continue to suffer in the hands of Ms Izeduwa who has planted lieutenants to intimidate staff as a way of indirect retaliation strategy. The last thing we want to report is on haphazard, misguided and mismanaged recruitment of staff amidst budgetary challenges. This year, Ms Izeduwa has allocated USD 300000 solely for her travels and missions. She has instructed all thematic units that there is no programme funds and that only USD 300000 is available for programming-an amount equivalent to her travel allocation for 2019! The cause of the programming challenge being a bloated organogram- caused by the recruitment of consultants amidst the existence of the staff. While Ms Izeduwa has continued to muzzle staff, she continues to order for recruitment of duplicate roles and positions which continue to engrave the funding crisis. Her intention is to create a situation for another functional analysis-we did one in 2016-when she just joined. She intentions to use the functional analysis to eliminate all staff who she perceives as key witnesses of her investigation process. Madam Executive Director, in the midst of the unregulated hiring of consultants by the Regional Director, some staff have openly complained of lack of workloads and that they left well meaningful jobs only to be allocated very minor duties-like photocopying, filling in travel authorizations and documents or completing and filling in F10 forms for Advisors-which are not in line with the terms of refences to which they applied for. Yet, Ms Izeduwa continues to recruit with directions on who to recruit for what position. In the worst instance, staff have been summoned and asked what they are doing at UN Women and how they came to UN Women. In fact, some staff have been asked to identify their proper placement in the organogram. These are reflections of a failed leadership. On the issue of office typology, we encourage HQ to employ impartial approaches that will not harm staff but will ensure that the fundamental principles of UN policies are upheld. This includes the order of retention policies, appropriate compensatory policies, adequate consultations with staff and the Joint Staff Association, among other best work place practices. With the blessing of a new Deputy Regional Director, whom staff continue to have confidence in, the office continues to run without Ms Izeduwa who continues with her airflow missions. We request you Madam Executive Director to give a conclusive guidance on the office to reactivate the confidence and motivation of staff. The JSA, who continue to support staff, had indicated to us that you will institute an internal review on the conduct of Ms Izeduwa. To date, we have not received any single indication of the review. Ms Izeduwa continues to boast of her closer relationship with your office at the detriment of staff who are demotivated and paying for the price of absent leadership, abuse of authority, misadvised expenditures and recruitment processes, staff intimidation admitted through conduits planted by Ms Izeduwa, retaliation on staff through contractual threats, dysfunctional senior management team dominated by Ms Izeduwa and allies and dictatorial management. We have been patient Madam Executive Director. But we need answers! Yours, Concerned Staff Members."
