The Rivers State Secretariat complex was yesterday, September 4, 2025 turned into a theater of the absurd as a Permanent Secretary and a Director in the Ministry of Culture and Tourism were engaged in a brawl which degenerated into fisticuffs.
According to sources and eye witnesses at the Secretariat, the brawl, which took civil servants and visitors by surprise, was said to have attracted attention to Block C, which houses the ministry and others.
Inside sources told The Atlantic Bell that 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 Atlantic Bell learnt that the disagreement resulted first in a shouting match before degenerating into a brawl.
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.
