Police in Lusaka yesterday arrested New Labour party (NLP) leader Fresher Siwale for questioning President Edgar Lungu’s nationality.

And police yesterday bounced at People’s Party president Mike Mulongoti’s office when they went to pick him over the same allegations.

However, when asked to confirm the arrest, Police Spokesperson Esther Mwaata Katongo said her officers do not always inform her before carrying out certain operations whilst the Lusaka Province Commissioner Nelson Phiri said he could not talk as he was at a funeral.

“I have not seen that query and I am not aware that Siwale has been picked up and I have no idea of the operation that took place at Mr Mulongoti’s office. You know, investigations are so difficult. So if officers are conducting investigations or if they want to make a move, they don’t announce. Even me they don’t tell me until they are done with whatever they are doing, when they are done that’s when they come and say ‘Madam Mwaata this is the move that has been taken by officers,” said Katongo.

Civil Rights activist Gregory Chifire, however, narrated that he witnessed police officers raid Siwale’s house and took him to Lusaka Central Police after carrying out a search.

“I was there yes but I had left and I have just been told that they are on their way to Lusaka Central,” said Chifire.

And Mulongoti told News Diggers! that officers conducted a search at his office in the early hours of yesterday looking for President Lungu’s National Registration Card while he was attending a funeral in Lusaka’s Matero Township.

Mulongoti wondered why the police would go to look for the Head of State’s NRC at his office as if he was the President’s guardian.

“Yes there are officers who went to my office early this morning looking for the reg (National Registration Card) of Mr Lungu as if me I am the guardian of Mr Lungu. I was attending a funeral in Matero and then I got a call from my office that some officers had been there to look for a copy of his reg. So I just abandoned the funeral and came back to this other side of town. So I am not even on the run as they claim but I am not jut a guardian of Mr Lungu to be looking after his reg. So whatever they want to do, we are not going to run away, they will reach us,” Mulongoti said.

Mulongoti and Siwale have been conducting radio and television interviews, questioned the identity of the Zambian Head of State, claiming that President Lungu’s real names are Jonathan Mutaware from Malawi, but he stole the identity of the real Edgar Chagwa Lungu who died.

Mulongoti has also written the Office of the Public Protector demanding for an investigation into the contradicting facts around the President’s nationality.

“In one profile upon his elevation to Minister of Defence, it was reported that the President comes from chief Kambombo of Chama while his authorised biography in the book by Antony Mukwita states that he comes from Mukwama village in Petauke near the Malawian border. The authorized biography shows a picture of a house different from the actual house number 4001 in Chimwemwe where the President claims to have once lived,” observed Mulongoti.

On April 10, 2018, Cosmo Mumba reported Mulongoti to Woodlands police for allegedly defaming President Lungu.

He asked the police to arrest and charge Mulongoti with defamation and for “misleading the nation on Lungu’s nationality.”