“Dear President Edgar Lungu Sir,

When you formed government, you made a commitment to turn the country around, economically, politically and socially. As we head towards the end of your almost seven years in power, we have some pertinent questions that deserve your attention, sir.

Your Excellency, we remember when you started, you said you had no vision of your own for this country. You said you would use Michael Sata’s vision and the wisdom of the people of Zambia to guide you. Is this still the status today? If not, what is your vision now for Zambia?

In agriculture, what is you goal at the end of 2021? What tonnage of maize will Zambia be producing by the end of your term? What other cash crops would you have fostered to boost agriculture sustainability and food security? What more crop markets would have been opened in the region and beyond? How many more hungry mouths would you have fed? How much less malnutrition among babies below the age of five would you have combated? Would you have eliminated stunting in children due to the scarcity of food? Would you have stopped using mealie meal as a bait for votes in by-elections?

What is you goal in Health, Mr President? How many new hospitals, equipped with modern technology and stocked with long expiry drugs, would you have built? At the end of your term, sir, what patient-doctor ratio would you be boasting of? Mr President, how many qualified doctors would have remained unemployed at the end of your term next year? Would your government be paying doctors and nurses enough to keep them in the country? We want to know. How many people would have been prosecuted for stealing medical supplies and diverting donor aid for the health sector?

On the corruption fight, how many of your own ministers will you have prosecuted for theft and abuse of office by the end of your term? What about your own unexplained wealth? How rich would you have become at the end of 2021, Mr President? Would you be in a position to account for your wealth, sir? In government procurement, we have been told that there is what is called legal corruption in your government, where government officials collude with suppliers of goods and services to steal taxpayers money. How many arrests would you have made to stop this fraud? How many unqualified caders will have been removed from parastatal institutions where they are employed?

We are really interested to know what your vision is on the political violence in the nation. What is your end game? How much less political violence will the nation be observing as they bid farewell to the 6th President? Would you have wiped out violence coming out of State House? What is your goal on tribalism? Would you have quenched it by the end of your term? How many Zambians would you have worked with in your Cabinet from Southern Province? What kind of fair representation of all provinces would we see in appointments of heads of government institutions?

What is your goal on education Mr President? What would be the teacher-pupil ratio at the end of your term? We hear your friend President Paul Kagame of Rwanda promised every pupil access to a computer in government schools and it has come to pass. What is your promise to a pupil in Zambia, sir? We understand that teachers and other civil servants who have acquired loans have been badly affected because the increased lending rates and payment durations have extended. We also hear that your government is not remitting deductions to micro-finance institutions, thereby forcing them to stop lending money to government employees. How would this be resolved by 2021 when you will be leaving office, Mr President?

We want to know if, by the end of your term, mealie meal would be costing less than K45. Would you have brought down the inflation rate to seven per cent? Would the kwacha to a dollar rate be less than K9? Would the cost of fuel per litre come down to K8? Please, tell us if you envision a Zambia without load-shedding by the time you come to the end of your term.
Tell us. Please, don’t ask Mr Isaac Chipampe to answer for you, for once, tell the nation.”

We wish we could be accorded an opportunity to ask these questions in person. But we don’t see this happening any time soon.