Fish rots from the head down

Kudos to President Lazarus Chakwera for firing Lobin Lowe and his deputy from the Ministry of Agriculture. Kudos again for quickly finding a replacement for Lowe. In the past, the President dilly-dallied to find replacement for such positions.

After weeks of speculation about the bad deal that Malawi had entered into with a UK-based company to supply fertiliser under the Affordable Inputs Programme (AIP), it was only a matter of when and not if Lowe was going to be fired; for once Chakwera has been bold and decisive.

While the firing of Lowe and his deputy is a welcome development, there is still more that needs to be done to sanitise the whole ministry if not the whole of Chakwera’s Cabinet. The incompetence, lack of due diligence exists in every sector of this administration such that it is somehow normalised. It could be this normalisation that saw Lowe and team disregard laid down procurement procedures. Perhaps they thought they could do it because everyone else is doing it.

There is wanton wastage of public resources despite the austerity measures that the government announced. One of the reasons is that the leaders themselves fail to live by their word. They say one thing and do the opposite of what they say.

Initiative such as AIP have become vehicles for stealing public resources and corruption. We have heard of inflated procurement figures because everyone in the chain wants to benefit a little something. There are cases of awarding tenders to political cronies, boyfriends and girlfriends. Contracts have been given to company tailoring companies to supply fertiliser simply because the tailor is politically connected person.

There is a lot that goes on. It is somehow unfair for the President not take the blame for this AIP fiasco. The President and the entire Cabinet and Tonse Alliance partners are as much to blame as Lowe and others. I want to believe that AIP being a brainchild of Chakwera and his Tonse alliance partners, he would be very interested in the implementation of the programme. The President ought to be kept abreast of every step of the AIP implementation.

The implementation success or failure of AIP, is the success or failure of Chakwera, Malawi Congress Party and the entire Tonse Alliance. These are people that championed this cause. This administration is called Chakwera-administration for a reason. This is a tag that shouldn’t be taken lightly. It carries and demands responsibility and accountability from the leadership. It is bad leadership that has led us to this mess before us. It is leadership that fails to do due diligence that has led Lowe to enter into a contract with a company that God knows what it does, but surely not fertiliser.

It is bad, incompetent and disinterested leadership that allowed Lowe to handle even issues that were not under him. If it did, we wouldn’t be in this mess.

So, as they say, a fish rots from the head down, Mr. President and your entire Cabinet, you are as much to blame as Lowe is. Accept that you also failed to do due diligence. Agriculture being the backbone of our economy, you, Mr. President, should have been interested in what goes on in the implementation of AIP and maybe you would have stopped this mess in the tracks.