PaleoNet: potential crisis at Nairobi National Museum (Turkana fossils)

[Alan Kabat]

 Here's an archived link to the full story:   https://archive.is/UWEPa

   
 On Saturday, October 12, 2024 at 08:00:53 PM EDT, Alan Kabat via PaleoNet <paleonet at lists.paleonet.org> wrote:   

 This weekend's Wall Street Journal has a full-page article on the funding crisis at the Nairobi National Museum, which has the Leakey material and other Turkana fossils.  A subscription may be required for online access, but your institutional or public library may have access.
A previous director allegedly embezzled the equivalent of US $4 million through ghost employees who allegedly paid kickbacks to the director.  Hence the financial straits.  This museum was formerly known as the National Museum of Kenya, and before that, as the Coryndon Museum.  

Some excerpts follow:
https://www.wsj.com/world/africa/nairobi-national-museum-natural-history-leakey-832f0262?mod=hp_lead_pos7
Louise Leakey is paleo royalty, descendant of some of the world’s most famous fossil-hunters. Now, walking through the backrooms of the Nairobi National Museum, surrounded by million-year-old specimens her family collected, in laboratories her father built, next to an auditorium with her grandfather’s statue outside, Leakey can picture Kenya’s—and her family’s—legacy falling to pieces. 
The museum’s open shelves and the aisles between them are crammed with tens of thousands—maybe hundreds of thousands—of ancient specimens, stored loose in plastic bags, perched precariously on wooden tables, sinking into decaying, decades-old foam that leaves blue-green stains on fossilized bone. Loosely attached paper labels that identify which bone is whose are vulnerable to a stiff breeze through the lab’s open windows. . . . 

. . . . In the paleontology lab, Leakey flips gingerly through the brittle pages of a notebook identifying where Meave discovered certain fossils four decades ago. 
There’s no fire-suppression system in the lab to keep the documents from going up in flames. Fossils without such context are nearly useless, scientists say. Hanging over Nairobi is the specter of the 2018 fire at Brazil’s national museum, which destroyed most of the 20 million specimens in the 200-year-old collection.
“We run a real risk of losing very valuable information if we don’t do something about this incredibly urgently,” she says. . . .
. . . . Ghost workers
Louise Leakey had long been skeptical of Gikungu’s predecessor, archaeologist Mzalendo Kibunjia, thinking him unqualified to lead the museum back to health. She resigned as chair of the museum board of directors when the government named Kibunjia director-general in 2015. 

Rumors circulated about alleged misuse of public funds at the museum. Eventually, a museum employee tipped off anticorruption authorities to the alleged plot.

Kenyan investigators say Kibunjia and his accomplices recruited more than 100 ghost workers and put them on the payroll. The ghost workers were real people who did no work, received museum salaries, kept a small share for themselves and turned the rest over to Kibunjia and a handful of confederates, according to Eric Ngumbi, spokesman for Kenya’s Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission, the independent government agency that filed the criminal charges.
All told, the conspirators allegedly stole 490 million Kenya shillings from the museum, or some $4 million, Ngumbi said. . . . 
>>>>>>>>>>>
--Alan Kabat



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