PP wanted Lilongwe stadium named after JB

Malawi Government’s decision to name the newly-constructed Lilongwe-based stadium after President Peter Mutharika’s brother Bingu wa Mutharika, reversed an earlier plan by the People’s Party administration to name it after former president Joyce Banda.

Sources within PP this week confirmed to Weekend Nation that by the time the party was coming out of government, procurement of the stadium’s materials, bearing President Joyce Banda’s name, had already been sent to China for processing.

When contacted, principal secretary at the Ministry of Youth Justin Saidi, said he was not aware that the previous government had proposed Joyce Banda’s name for the national stadium.

“The only name that we know Cabinet has approved is Bingu National Stadium,” he said.

Contrary to Saidi’s remarks, however, spokesperson of the Chinese company constructing the stadium, Effiy Huang, told Weekend Nation that the previous government had given them the name Joyce Banda National Stadium.

Asked if her company has already made progress in the procurement of materials carrying the name of Joyce Banda, Huang said the procurement had not yet been done and the change of the name is not going to affect their plans.

The $65 million state-of-the-art stadium is being constructed with a loan from the People’s Republic of China.

Minister of Information Kondwani Nankhumwa declined to comment on the matter when Weekend Nation contacted him, asking, instead, for more time to respond.

But according to the Weekend Nation’s source, a Cabinet meeting held at the Zomba State House in February 2014 agreed to name the stadium after Joyce Banda.

Minister of Sports and Youth Development Grace Chiumia seemed to confirm as much when she told Weekend Nation that what the People’s Party had left was just a proposal that was never implemented.

When contacted, former sports minister Enoch Chihana could neither confirm nor deny that Cabinet already approved the decision to name the stadium after the PP president.

Despite Chihana’s decision to be non-committal, reliable sources who were party to the decision-making process insisted that minutes of the Zomba State House meeting contained this decision.

“What the Peter Mutharika government is doing is simply reversing the previous government’s decision,” said a source.

No one in the current or the former government could explain why it is essential to name the stadium after an individual president or why neutral names such as Lilongwe Stadium or National Stadium have not been considered.

PP spokesman Ken Msonda suggested that government should institute a committee to look into the naming of such important infrastructures in the country.

The naming of the stadium is only one of the controversies that have dogged the project since its inception.

In 2012, the Bingu wa Mutharika government moved the project from Lilongwe to Blantyre. The decision received a lot of criticism from opposition political parties and irked people from the Central Region, until this was reversed by the PP government.