Drama at Nation Media Group

From:   jacko mafia
Sent:   Tuesday, January 23, 2007 6:00 PM
To:     Linus Gitahi
Cc:     Wangethi Mwangi; Joseph Odindo; Helen Mbugua; Editorial@nation.co.ke; newsdesk@nationa.co.ke;    news-citizenTz@nation.co.ke; NTV News;NyeriEditorial; eldoretstaff; Msa Editorial; Kisumu Advertising; Nakuru; Advertising

Subject:        Re: The lid is off

Dear Mr Gitahi.

This is a letter from the staff of the Editorial Department and it's a follow up to another letter we sent you in December highlighting teething problems facing our department.

We are pleased to inform you that we are pleased with the steps you have taken so far to address the problems in the Editorial Department and in the larger NMG. From our own observation of the manner you have gone about your business, we now know we have a CEO who has the interest of the NMG and its staff at heart.

In our December letter, we have told you that we would wait until end of January to see if there were going to be any meaningful changes and reforms carried out by your administration. We have reliably been informed that a radical surgery is in the offing and your dreams are to see the right staff on the NMG bus. We are committed to support all your resolve to offload the excess and unproductive passengers from the NMG bus.

We, too, don't want joy riders and blood suckers who live on other people's sweat. We would prefer leaner and a productive staff who are
rewarded according to their performance.

However, we are disturbed that, whereas you mean well for the Editorial Department, you have taken the wrong path in picking the team of managers to select the staff to be offloaded from the NMG bus. We understand the editorial team comprise of the Editorial Director, Mr Wangethi Mwangi, the Group Managing Editor, Mr Joseph Odindo, and the Group HR Director, Ms Hellen Mbugua.

The three managers, and to a large extent Mr Mwangi and Mr Odindo, are the source of the problems bedeviling the Editorial Department and we gave you the reasons in our December letter. Since we understand the exercise for identifying the staff to be offloaded, transferred and promoted is complete, we decided to bring our heads together and decide the way forward. Journalists from Nairobi and representatives from all the bureaus held a meeting at a venue and date we will not disclose and came up with a resolve to write to you again and communicate what was deliberated.

a.. Mr Wangethi and Mr Odindo should be nowhere near any meeting where any reforms and changes in the Editorial Dept are being carried out. The two should have been the first casualty of your Administration's reforms. Just like President Kibaki put his foot in the
mouth by retaining Kanu's civil servants intact, we believe you have squandered a good opportunity to clean up the mess in the Editorial Dept by appointing the Mr Mwangi and Mr Odindo to spearhead the reforms.

 a.. We demand that the exercise of laying off unproductive staff must be transparent and target the non-performers. Mr Mwangi and Mr
Odindo may use the exercise to get rid of good staffers they don't like. In our December letter, we listed the joy-riders and the multiple posts which were purposely created by Mr Mwangi and Mr Odindo to reward their friends and girlfriends. We demand that the posts
be abolished and all the busy body bosses be the first to be shown the door. Mr Mwangi and Mr Odindo filled the newsroom with their girlfriends and friends poached from other media houses, yet they are unproductive and can hardly write any literate story. These too must be offloaded from the NMG bus.

We want to know why none of the women who have extended sexual favours to both Mr Mwangi and Mr Odindo have been spared the axe. Adhiambo Odera, who was employed directly to the position of the Editor after a sexual encounter in Malindi with Mr Mwangi is one of those women who have been spared yet her work is good mastery of illiteracy. She can't write or edit any story. Editing of Buzz magazine is done by correspondents. But she can't be touched because both Mr Mwangi and Mr Odindo share her as lovers and they fear she can expose them. It's the same case for many other women. Mr Mwangi and Mr Odindo, your wives will be hearing from us
 very soon.

 a.. We had informed you and listed sections which are headed by managers who are non-university graduates. Examples are the News Desk, where we have four editors, and only one is a graduate. The Form Six graduates were put there deliberately by Mr Wangethi for his own selfish reasons so that they can dance to his tune. We can't have reporters who have university degrees and masters reporting to Form Six managers! They too must leave or be demoted and given their rightful places like the copy-taking desk.

 a.. The House that his Highness the Aga Khan built has been into a brothel by top managers. Mr Wangethi, Mr Odindo and Mr Nabutolla have one thing in common - they take the golden cup for their ability of quenching their sexual lust using NMG female employees. The prime factor and criteria for promotions and hiring of female reporters and editors has been their sexual performance. This is something the Aga Khan and the entire world have never known. This is something we are going to expose and bring it to the attention of the Aga Khan and the world. In our December letter, we listed just a fraction of the female staff who have been rewarded with plum jobs and promotions after satisfying the sexual lust of Mr Mwangi and Mr Odindo. How then can the same sex perverts be the ones spearheading the laying off of unwanted staff?  We hope you had time to make your own independent investigations to verify the insight we gave you on the string of women who have been promoted or hired by the two managers based on their sexual performance.

 a.. Finally, we give both Mr Wangethi and Mr Odindo up to end of February to resign from NMG or we smoke them out. We have laid a
water-tight strategy to do so. We have various options to do so if you don't force them to resign or their conscience doesn't drive them to
doing so.

 Among the strategies we have are exposing the shame of NMG being a brothel in all parts of Kenya, Nairobi being the main focus, presenting the spouses of Mr Wangethi and Mr Odindo and the women they have been sleeping with with evidence, and writing to the Aga Khan and informing how his House has been turned into a brothel by the managers he has employed to manage his affairs. We have the contacts of all their spouses and they will hear from us very soon. We will also circulate pamphlets on the streets detailing who sleeps with who in NMG. Other strategies remain our secret and it's up to you to decide if you want the vibrant company you inherited from Mr Kiboro to sink under your watch. Things will start rolling very fast from March 1 if our demands are not met. But we will support you if we are satisfied with the reforms and the departure of Mr Mwangi and Mr Odindo.

Ms Hellen Mbugua, we also have a dose for you. Your husband will also be hearing from us on your sex escapades with KBC MD. We have water-tight dossier on you.

We can't sit back and allow immorality to continue thriving in NMG. NMG will explode and the rot which has been perpetuated by top managers will soon be in public domain. We can't be exposing the likes of Bishop Margaret Wanjiru and Samuel Gichuru yet we have
 managers and other staff who are worse rotten. We are putting on notice Mr Mwangi, Mr Odindo and the other managers who have found it difficult tokeep their zips tightly shut that sex scandals and the sex tree of who sleeps with who in Editorial and other departments will be public knowledge soon. They should start preparing their spouses psychologically. Watch this space!

NMG prides itself as a successful company, a market leader and a mirror of the society. We must set the example by actions and deeds. Managers can't preach water and drink wine. The hour of reckoning has come. The lid has been blown off internally and soon the world will be reading about the brothel that is Nation Centre.

We wish you luck!

 Cc
 Wangethi Mwangi
Joseph Odindo
 Hellen Mbugua
All NMG staff