BY JACK BANDA
What is mesmerising to me is how Dr Namadingo has not only changed what most people thought about him after reading the story but also how he has used it to raise his profile. …Clever kid, isn’t he?!
However, don’t get me wrong here, I am neither saying that Dr Namadingo is right nor am I saying he is innocent. 2017 is a long time for both him and Queens to leave an issue about money hanging like that. Something should have been done by Namadingo to notify the sponsor companies about the change and suspicious situation at Queens. The kind of trust that Dr Namadingo says the companies had for him is dodgy in my books. Corruption is just pervasive in this country of ours.
That aside, I marveled at the way Dr Namadingo understands Malawians and the power of social media.
The language that most of us Malawians understand are emotions and esthetics. We don’t care much about the facts and logic. That is how we have ended up with Chakwera who is now causing us untold suffering.
In the ideal world, by way of responding to the allegations made by the newspaper, the story about the child with skin cancer and him helping with the administration of the morphine, sad and fond as it maybe is unnecessary. How he raised money within 4 days instead of 40 and the accompanying tears was unnecessary.
What is worrisome is how he breached and diverted himself from the contract he had with the initial company that sent him to the cancer unit. That was not okay. He shouldn’t have made things about Namadingo.
In defending himself, the information that was needed from Namadingo was the actual status and stand of the companies that pledged to sponsor. What companies are these? How much money precisely did each company pledge to give? After learning that the high dependency unit had been completed by OG Issa and the suspicion that Namadingo had that the money could be abused or diverted, what did the companies say about their money? How about the length of time it has taken, what do the companies say about that? …That is what relates to the allegations and not the tears and the other stuff that he was on about. We have had enough tears from Matola albeit not enough to fix electricity.
Sorry about this, I love Namadingo to bits but the egocentric image he is displaying and the kind of trust he believes he has from the companies and the people doesn’t cut it. It smacks a Chakwera to me. This has to be said because corruption in Malawi is pervasive. Unless if this issue is examined from the facts not emotions and embellishments, we can’t assume that the companies, Namadingo or Queens are innocent.
That said, looking at how we think in Malawi where even Chakwera could convince the court, Chilima and a lot of hand clappers by using lies and insults to APM, a beautiful English accent and religious innuendos, Namadingo is a genus.
On how he has used social media to waylay the power and relevance of newspapers and to use what is supposed to be a bad story to his advantage is super.
