By Ishaya Ibrahim, News Editor
Workers of the Good Shepherd Newspaper, a publication owned by the Catholic Archdiocese of Abuja, are faced with multiple shockers.
First, they are being owed eight months salary arrears, and are not sure when the next pay cheque will come after the last one in November 2019. Then came the big blow. Their salaries have been slashed with effect from January this year.
“If we have been collecting our salaries regularly, would they have asked us to return the money they have now slashed? I am surprised this is happening in a Catholic Church,” a shocked staffer told TheNiche.
Some of the workers who spoke to TheNiche said the financial woes the Catholic publication has been going through was self-inflected.
According to one of the workers, nepotism has crippled the operations of the publication.
They accused the director of the Social Communication Department of the Diocese, Reverend Father Patrick Alumuku, who oversees the publication, of turning the place to a Tiv community, an ethnic group from Benue State.
“All the top management staff from the director, the editor, accountant, advert manager, project manager, almost all the senior management staff are Tiv people,” he said.
Another source who also does not want his name mentioned because of fear of victimisation, said the woes of the publication started when the former editor, Osisam Ede, an Igbo man, was pushed out in 2018 and a Tiv man was brought to replace him.
“The former editor was attracting adverts for the publication and sales were growing. But they decided to push him out by refusing to renew his contract when it expired. The new person came with a lot of arrogance and most of the staff who were helping the publication to make money decided to quit,” he said.
Another trouble the publication is said to be having is the director’s alleged frosty relationship with many priests in the Diocese who refuse to buy the newspaper nor help promote its patronage among their congregation.
TheNiche called Reverend Father Alumuku twice to respond to the story, but he did not take his call.
Also, as at the time of writing this story, the director did not reply an SMS seeking his own side of the story.