ROME– IFAD strategy whizz Gary Howe has quit citing differences with President Kanayo Nwanze as top honcho Thomas Elhaut "took a sabbatical" after clashes with the Nigerian czar, UN sources say.

 Howe resigned last week as Officer in Charge of the Strategy and Knowledge Department in the latest round of blood-letting at the Rome-based agency only a few months after he replaced Vice President Adjoint Carlos Seres who resigned informing staff that “nobody with dignity” could accept Nwanze’s dictatorial tendencies, the sources said.

 Elhaut, a Belgian former Asia and Pacific Region Director, was sent on a full year’s paid sabbatical after bitter differences with Nwanze. IFAD insiders said he had been hounded for alleged sexual harassment charges a year ago. Ethics Officer Olivia Graham sought relentlessly to establish a case against Elhaut based on anonymous denunciations but failed miserably, the sources said.

 Howe, a British veteran of the agency, as long ago as 2010 expressed concern to colleagues about what he described privately as “sleazy” pressure from the president’s office to camouflage his personal expenditure including his sprawling villa on the Appian Way that Nwanze had to leave after it was disclosed by the Insider.

 While Howe’s expertise was recognised as essential to keep the agency functioning he was excluded from group photos of senior managers adorning the agency’s walls and from some senior managerial meetings. “It was well-known he was not a yes man,” said one source, “some people interpret his marginalisation as intolerance of any intellectuals.”

 Meanwhile after Austrialian MPS who read Italian Insider’s exposé of Nwanze’s sky high expenses decided not to re-join the International Fund for Agricultural Development, all Australian staff at the agency were warned they would not receive promotion in retaliation and that their contracts likely would not be extended.

 Nwanze was evidently furious that Canberra “double-crossed” him after initially raising his hopes they would provide a massive126 million dollar contribution. Nwanze jumped the gun on the decision by awarding Australian staffer Ronald Hartman an Ifad “presidential medal” for bringing Oz back into the gravy train, but reckoned without Insider’s long reach to the Australian parliament.

  In other developments Kevin Kleaver, the respected Vice president Adjoint of the Project management department finally departed and was replaced by John McIntyre, a retired deputy DG of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) .

 McIntyre’s rise to influence was attributed to the so-called ‘wives club’ behind the scenes in Ifad’s spanking Laurentina headquarters. McIntyre’s Ethiopian wife is a close relative of Nwanze’s long-time devoted advisor Henock Kifle, who retired from the African Development Bank.

 Despite donors’ concern about spending at Ifad as much as dlrs 1 million reputedly was spent on re-branding Ifad’s main slogan with outside consultants to earn their huge fee merely coming up with the phrase “Investing in Rural People.”

 “In the name of new branding, consultant scavengers have wolfed down donor funds to coin these three words that suggest nothing new,” one diplomatic observer said, recalling Nwanze’s words at the Aquila G-8 summit “poor people do not eat declarations.”

 “Should the poor people now eat the three words bought for 1 million euros?” the IFAD-watcher asked.

 A further 1 million euros was spent on a staff global meeting held after the IFAD Council meeting in February.