The minister of tourism, culture and national orientation, Prince Adetokunbo Kayode, has decried the poor state of affairs at the National Commission for Museums and Monuments which informed his decision to send the director-general, Dr. Joseph Eboreime, and four directors of the commission on compulsory leave.

Kayode expressed his worries for the commission at a round table meeting he held with directors of the ministry in Abuja.

He said staff of NCMM were owed their entitlements, and no excavation work was going on due to mismanagement at the museums commission.

The Eboreime-led administration found itself on stormy water barely a year in office, with series of petitions trailing the implementation of the federal government staff rationalisation scheme in the commission.

As if that was not enough, there were established cases of under payment of staff and an embargo on staff promotion, which the staff claimed should be on a yearly basis.

However, the disappearance of multi-million dollar worth of artefacts from the Benin National Museum generated more petitions from a pan-Bini Cultural Association, the Bini National Congress, which drew the attention of the minister and National Assembly to development leading to a probe on the missing artefacts.

In a related development, the minister of tourism, culture and national orientaiton, Prince Adetokunbo Kayode, has inaugurated the committee on the implementation of the tourism master-plan.

He inaugurated the committee Wednesday in Abuja. The tourism masterplan was launched late last year and has been described as the road map to the comprehensive development of the emerging tourism industry in Nigeria.