Good riddance to Lowe
There is something about literature that informs our lives. Sometime in 1602 the bard of Stafford on Avon, William Shakespeare, wrote the play Troilus and Cressida. Based on the Trojan War, which was also featured in Homer’s epic The Iliad, Shakespeare introduces us to the term good riddance.
It is only befitting that after President Lazarus Chakwera kicked out of his Cabinet Minister of Agriculture Lobin Lowe that sensible people can say: Good riddance to you Honourable Lowe, it was a pleasure knowing you.
We must admit that Lowe is an able politician who even took over from Chakwera as leader of opposition after Chakwera resigned his position to challenge the results of the 2019 presidential elections. Going by the history of the Malawi Congress Party (MCP), it is for a fact that party leaders mostly become the party’s presidential candidate. I may be reading too much into it but Gwanda Chakuamba, John Tembo and Chakwera himself set the trend. Lowe was destined for greater things, as it were.
In fact, Lowe is an accomplished agriculturalist whose record in the academia is all laid bare for us to see. He is a practicing farmer as well. Which is why it is very surprising that under his nose, the Ministry of Agriculture has been coming with strange scandals.
In the first place, how can you explain the logic in closing down Admarc operations at a time Malawi is going into the lean period? We saw the price of
maize rising from around K17 000 to K22 000 with that closure and obviously the food inflation soared with the rise in the price of the staple.
It is under his tenure that we have seen about 14 truckloads of maize was diverted. Instead of delivering the maize to the National Food Reserve Agency the transporter put it on the road to Tanzania. That is K123 million worth of maize being ‘exported’ just like that!
And under his tenure we hear the ministry got into an imbroglio where a UK-based firm duped Malawi of K750 million meant for this year’s Agricultural Inputs Programme (AIP). A whopping K750 million just growing wings like that!
And then, with utter impunity officials under Lowe defied a call to appear before the Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture to explain the state of the AIP this year. They gave the flimsy reason that they were attending a presidential talk show in the heat of Chikwawa.
That is where the team had it all wrong. You don’t wish problems away. It never works. That was the very moment that the rat got more rotten.
And then, a few hours before his dismissal Lowe refused to brief the media, even on simple facts like how much fertiliser was coming in, where was it acquired and how many beneficiaries was it for. He simply kept a tight lip but it was all bare for all to see that there were only 13 trucks with just 30 tonnes of urea fertiliser on load.
While Lowe has been embroiled in all sorts of mess in this key ministry, the question remains: Who else has been part of this cartel?
After firing Lowe, should we say the story ends here?
By firing Lowe, Chakwera has admitted the mess that has been evident in the ministry. Now, these are public resources and anybody who plunders the people’s coffers must face the music. They just shouldn’t go scot free. Only this week we hear former Information Minister Henry Mussa has been sent to jail over a theft of 10 computers in his ministry.
Eyes are on Chakwera’s who has initiated the necessary steps to ending the rot.
