Rainbow Party General Secretary Wynter Kabimba says Chishimba Kambwili will help the country if he backs his corruption allegations with evidence.

And Kabimba says government should have prioritized procurement of drugs instead of constructing the Lusaka-Ndola dual carriageway.

Speaking when he featured on 5FM’s ‘The Burning Issue’ on Thursday, Kabimba said it was hard to buy into Kambwili’s crusade in the absence of evidence.

“The problem is that if my friend or brother CK (Chishimba Kambwili) were coming out with evidence, since he came out of government yesterday, and he knew that this was wrong, if he had been coming out with evidence, then he would have helped the country. You know populism is not the same as intelligence, just be very careful about populism. It has landed America in a lot of problems. Just Trump standing up to say ‘American first’ they voted for him. Where is his [Kambwili] evidence? So that we can believe him, so that we can join his crusade,” Kabimba said.

“I thought he said he had a degree from some university on the Copperbelt? You can’t just argue, you know Zack I just look at your jacket and say ‘that jacket must be costing $2,000 dollars’ unless I can show an invoice to say here is an invoice to show that, that jacket costs $2000 dollars. So you can’t just be jumping from one issue to another without any evidence. You jump from fire engines to the Lusaka-Ndola [dual] carriage way, give us your evidence so that we can join your crusade, maybe he is right!”

And Kabimba said Zambia needed drugs in hospitals more than it needed the Lusaka-Ndola dual carriageway.

“This is a poor country. This is a country where we are at the beck and call of the American government to donate ARVs to us for those that are living with HIV and AIDS to survive. We can’t afford the cost. And Trump is threatening now to cut-off that donation. So where do your priorities lay? To save the lives of your citizens so that you have money to buy drugs in the hospitals including ARVs or to see four cars going in one direction like they are racing? In my humble opinion, your priority must lie with serving people’s lives first,” he said.

He said that even if the said road was not expanded, people would still be moving from Lusaka to Ndola.

“If that amount was correct, $1.2 billion dollars to construct a dual carriageway between Lusaka and Ndola, even if you don’t construct that dual carriage way we will still be getting to Ndola, people will still be going to Ndola, even today as we are talking now, there are people traveling from Ndola to Lusaka and from Lusaka to Ndola but there is no dual carriageway. And it is not affecting anybody’s life. But the lack of drugs, there are people that are dying now in the UTH because there are no drugs, some died last night, some will die tomorrow because there are no drugs. The argument here is one of priorities, we are not saying that we don’t want a dual carriageway, no. before we deal with major priorities, it can’t be a priority to the extent that we should spend $1.2 billion dollars. For God’s sake that’s a lot of money for a third world country,” Kabimba said.

Meanwhile, Kabimba challenged President Lungu to instruct the Zambia Public Procurement Authority (ZPPA) to publish the tender process of fire tenders in order to prove that his Cabinet had nothing to do with it.

“They (PF) are just trying to hide under the umbrella of a dead man [Michael Sata] to justify the corruption. There is no way Michael Sata would have accepted that this poor country, the way I knew him, should spend one million dollars to buy one fire tender, there is no way he would have accepted that. And they should be ashamed even to stand up in parliament on the floor of the House and use the name of a dead man to justify corruption. Shame to them! Secondly, how in God’s name would a company in the UK just dream that they need fire engines in Zambia? And submit an unsolicited bid, where is ZPPA in all this? What I have said in my statement is that if Cabinet has nothing to do with this, if Edgar Lungu and his Cabinet had nothing to do with this, they must instruct ZPPA to publish that tender in the print media, tell us the companies that participated in that tender, show us who the lowest bidder was, and tell us when these tender was evaluated? That is the procedure. So for Edgar and his Cabinet to acquit themselves, I challenge them to tell ZPPA to publish that tender process and evaluation to convince us that in their infinite wisdom, for the poor country like Zambia, the ZPPA Director General thought that that was the best decision,” said Kabimba.

“And don’t forget that there are Ministers that sit on the ZPPA tender board such as Minister of Finance, Local Government, and Justice. There are about five or six ministers that sit, there is a ministerial tender sub-committee component. So they can’t run away from that, that is what I know. So I am not speaking like ba Kambwili, I am giving the Zambians correct information. There are Ministers that participate in the tender process at ZPPA. That is the law if you look at the Act.”