KABUSHI PF member of parliament Bowman Lusambo says he bought the wild animals which were seized, along with his Chamba Valley house, from the private sector and his children deserve to continue living with them.
In an interview, Lusambo said his children deserved to see Zebras in his yard because he had worked hard for them.
“You tell that [Queen] Chibwe girl that you are just a bad messenger, with a useless message. She has been talking about animals, she has never kept any animals, even a cat and she is talking about my animals. Those are my animals and I bought those animals from private people, I have been feeding those animals for the past four years. Let them go to ZAWA, they will tell them that those are Bowman’s animals, let them go to the Ministry of Tourism, they will tell them that those are Bowman’s animals. Those are my animals, yes I am keeping animals into captivity, but they are my animals, I bought those animals. So let her try to keep cats. My heart sometimes gets frustrated because I look at my family, my family is a very young family. My twins are just one year eight and now they are in the streets. I worked for them, they deserve to be next to animals, they deserve to be keeping zebras in their yard, because I worked for that,” he said.
And commenting on ACC’s spokesperson Queen Chibwe’s remarks that the Commission had summoned him for further questioning but he had been elusive, Lusambo said the ACC had nothing new against him.
“Remember ACC has nothing against me. All those things you are seeing are just fabricated things. If ACC have other allegations against me why can’t they release it to the Zambian people? ACC in its current form is not a Commission, it is an advertising agent for UPND. We know what ACC wants. On Tuesday [or] Wednesday last week my friend called Silumesi. He wanted to find out why they are doing this to me, Silumesi told my friend ‘we have been given instructions to arrest Bowman. We want to revoke his bond because we have suspected him to be talking to our witnesses’. So we know what those guys are planning. I have all the details of that call and the timings. So, for me what they want from me is not for new allegations, they want to go and revoke [my] bond, which is not their work. It is in the hands of the courts now, they have no power to revoke that bond. We know their plans, the plan on a table when they are drinking Kachasu, so they can’t have secrets,” he said.
Lusambo said the reason he did not go to ACC when he was summoned was that he was unwell.
“I am a law-abiding citizen, I am a member of parliament. I don’t think I can fail to go to ACC when they call me. ACC called me, I have been there willingly, I have gone to ACC knowing that there is nothing that will come out of ACC and that there is nothing that ACC has against me. If you remember I went to ACC alone cycling, there was no one who pursued me to go to ACC. For doing nothing, I was handcuffed at ACC just to show to the general public that they have arrested Bowman,” said Lusambo.
“I was supposed to be at the courts of law last week, I wasn’t feeling well, I was at the hospital and I was given bed rest. ACC started pursuing me inspite having a sick note from the hospital signed by the doctor. They started pursuing me for no apparent reason. They came home twice, they even came home around 01 and they went around 03:30 hours. I was seeing everything that was happening. I decided to come out of Zambia for me to go and seek for further medical check up. My lawyers wrote to ACC, to ask them to give us a date so that we can go there, but they refused to give us a date. My lawyers have written to ACC twice asking them to give us a date to go there. I can’t fail to go to an advertising agent, I will go there.”