When you’re going for war and your general starts believing in omens, just know that you have lost because that is a sign of cowardice. That general is not fit to lead your army.

Similarly, when a Head of State who claims to be a God-fearing, humble man starts to believe in omens when encountered with economic challenges, then there is a big problem.

How did the Head of State make the connection between the riots on the Copperbelt and fake pastors? What does he know about these fake prophets to start with? We need to know where our Commander-in-Chief is drawing his conclusions from.

If there is something that President Lungu is trying to tell the nation about these fake pastors, let him educate us plainly, in simple terms, so that we can all understand because not all of us understood his position on the Copperbelt chaos. We have no doubt that President Lungu is not talking from without here because our Head of State is a man of ‘substance’, he believes deeply in having proof before he can act on corruption. Similarly, now that he has pointed his finger on fake pastors, we are certain that he has proof and that is why we are asking him to educate us on this issue.

The Head of State’s responsibility is to find solutions to the problems that the country is facing and not engaging in worthless finger-pointing games. But now that he has pointed his fingers in a particular direction, let him go ahead and name the fake pastors that he was talking about instead of play-acting like the trending Seer 1.

We wonder if it is true that fake pastors are causing riots. If it is, why has government failed to contain them? Our government has many laws at its disposal to bring to book anyone who would cause such commotion. So it is not proper for the President to be telling us that this is the problem. We expect him to give us a road map of how he plans to deal with the problem. But unfortunately, it is becoming clear day by day that government has no clear plan, they are operating through trial and error methods.

What we are reading here is that instead of sitting with his Cabinet to brainstorm on how to navigate through this economic crisis, President Lungu has keenly been following Seer 1’s drama and his idea is to ride on it. Being the opportunist that he is, the President wants to distract the nation from focusing on the major issues that his administration has caused with cheap propaganda about the so-called fake pastors.

Fake pastors or not, our challenges as a nation are economic in nature. This country has had fake pastors in the past but they have never caused commotion, so what have they done today that is causing riots? Have they wrecked the country’s economy and brought about hunger? No! That responsibility lies on someone else’s shoulders: President Edgar Lungu.

Our economic challenges came about mainly because of government’s propensity for acquiring debt while diverting huge chunks of the borrowed money into people’s pockets. Today, our President wants to blame fake pastors for the hunger that people are experiencing on the Copperbelt. What a shame!

In our view, the country’s economic challenges should not be linked to superstition, they’re man-made problems and President Lungu himself should be held responsible for the current state of affairs. But if the President is trying to respond indirectly to Seer 1, then let him also tell us; does he know that particular person? And if he knows Seer 1, does he know any of his ministers and members of his party who know him and have done things with him? Let him clear the air about this because then, we will get an understanding of where the linkage is coming from between the riots on the Copperbelt and fake pastors.