Moses Gahigi
28 September 2008
Gasabo — The country's music forum, Kundumuzikinyarwanda, an umbrella body of local musicians, is on the verge of disintegrating owing it to an ugly money-related scandal involving two top managers of the body.
The scam unfolded after the executive committee organized a concert that took place on the August 8 this year at Petit Stade in Kigali which attracted over 5,000 people, with each ticket going for 2000 RWF.
According to the Secretary General of Kundumuzikinyarwanda, Chrispin Ngabirama, who is also the founder of the group, the body's president, a one Alex Muyoboke ,and vice president Lucie Aline Kabatesi, AKA Queen Ally, a renowned local musician, disappeared with the gate collections and tickets and switched off their phones, only to be seen two days later with less than a quarter of the money calculated to have come from the concert.
The tickets produced for the concert were 5000 in number; however there are some people who paid liquid cash, mostly those who entered early before the tickets were brought. It is reliably said that as soon as the show ended, Queen Ally and Alex put the money in the formers car and disappeared.
"Each ticket went for 2000 thousand, this makes the money expected out of the concert to be more that 10 million RWF, but after the two-day hibernation which Alex and Queen Ally went in after the concert, they presented 2.7 million RWF" said Ngabirama.
According to other sources inside the music body, this was long coming given the irregularities perpetuated by these two top brasses.
For instance, it is alleged that during the preparations for this concert, the two are reported to have become increasingly discreet in their operations, as opposed to being open to all the executive members, a thing which alarmed the founder-members.
Another issue that made members smell a rat, was when Alex suggested that all musicians put on COJAD T-shirts, a banking institution for the youth, located in Kicukiro, a thing that looked as if the body top brass had got a financial package from the bank, which he kept to himself, because there is no way he could advertise a company without sponsorship.
When Sunday Times talked to Alex Muyoboke, one of those allegedly implicated in the money scandal, he vehemently refuted the allegations, saying that the money he presented is exactly what was collected from the concert and that for the T-shirts, it was done in order to have a uniform look during the performance.
According to a report from the SG, one of the security personnel appointed to oversee order on concert day disclosed that over four thousand people attended the concert.
It is alleged that Queen Ally appointed his brother, and his unknown employee to collect money at the entrance, yet the forum had appointed a treasurer, who was supposed to oversee all the money issues including gate collections, a thing that points that it was a well calculated move to swindle the concert money.
The treasurer, Fiston Ntambara, was the one supposed to announce the money collected from the concert, but despite his presence at the general meeting convened at Prime Holdings to present the concert report, Alex and Queen Ally are the ones who released the outcomes, since the treasurer and the SG had already been sidelined on the money issue.
The Kundumuzikinyarwanda forum was formed in 2007 by Chrispin Ngabirama as the concept developer, with the help of MSTR-X group, with an aim of uniting Rwandan musicians and promoting local Kinyarwanda music, as a way of preserving culture, and avoid being overtaken by foreign music.
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