AKAFUMBA – NDC FACTION JOSTLING FOR JOBS?

By ROGERS KALEROSOME officials of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) Joseph Rikki Akafumba faction have resorted to parading people before the camera to convince the UPND that it has numbers and hence deserved to be given positions in President Hakainde Hichilema’s government, NDC Copperbelt chairman James Zulu has said. Mr Zulu said, from the time the UPND formed government, officials from the Akafumba-faction led by George Sichula had been holding meetings at Chillers Night Club in Kitwe, parading people to create an impression that it has numbers. Mr Zulu said the faction had been desperately trying to make itself relevant to the alliance so that jobs could be offered to them. On Wednesday, Mwenya Musenge re-joined the Akafumba NDC faction and emphasised that they needed to get more numbers to get the respect from the UPND to avoid getting crumbs. Mr Zulu said Zambians must not take lightly such sentiments from the Akafumba faction, but take them seriously because they wanted to use people as stepping stones to government positions. “If you seriously follow the sentiments coming from the NDC faction of Akafumba, you will know that their motive is to get government positions to enjoy themselves. This is why every meeting they hold, they talk about enjoying themselves with UPND. “It is because of this that they are in panic mode and have resorted to parading people before the camera to convince the UPND that it has numbers and hence deserved to be given positions in the government,” Mr Zulu said.Mr Zulu said those who were being paraded that they had ditched the NDC of Saboi Imboela to join Mr Akafumba were being used to create an impression that they had a lot of support on the ground“The whole idea by this Akafumba faction is to use some NDC members to gain and hold the confidence of the UPND so that they can consider them for various government positions,” he said.