Court halts police raid at Chithyola’s Namuleri Farms as opposition leader cries political persecution

A planned police search of Namuleri Farms Limited — a commercial estate linked to former Minister of Finance and Leader of the Opposition Hon. Simplex Chithyola Banda — was temporarily halted after the Lilongwe Senior Resident Magistrate’s Court stayed the execution of a search warrant on 16 December 2025, court papers show.

The State had deployed more than 20 police officers from Area 30 Police Station in Lilongwe to execute the warrant at the estate in Kasungu. Police sources told this publication the operation was aimed at locating bags of fertiliser which officers alleged were diverted from the National Economic Empowerment Fund (NEEF).

The search, however, did not proceed after lawyers acting for Namuleri Farms successfully applied for an injunction to set aside the warrant.

An order issued by the Senior Resident Magistrate’s Court in Lilongwe — registered as Criminal Case No. 957 of 2025and dated 16 December 2025 — stayed the execution of the warrant obtained by the State a day earlier. The matter has since been set for mention on 18 December 2025.

In an interview from his farm, Chithyola Banda dismissed the police action as politically motivated, laughing off claims that he diverted fertiliser from NEEF and accusing the government of manufacturing a case against him.

“These people already have a case in their heads and are now looking for evidence to fit it,” he said, warning that continued persecution of opposition figures would divert the DPP government’s attention from urgent national challenges such as hunger, delayed maize imports, and fertiliser shortages.

Chithyola Banda added that Namuleri Farms is a substantial commercial operation and that allegations involving a few bags of fertiliser were implausible. “They can search whatever they want; they will not find wrongdoing because I did nothing wrong,” he said.

An employee at the farm, who declined to be named, told this publication that the scale of operations at Namuleri Farms makes the allegations difficult to accept.

“Namuri is a multibillion-Kwacha entity. The farm procures fertiliser in excess of K500 million annually and harvests maize and tobacco worth billions,” the manager said.

“In terms of scale and capital investment, this operation is comparable to long-established estates such as Conforzi. There is simply no logic in diverting a few bags of fertiliser from NEEF when procurement is done at that level.”

After being served with the injunction, police officers reportedly returned to Lilongwe.

Sources indicated that high-profile government officials were considering fresh legal steps to vacate the injunction and possibly return to the farm “or cook up new allegations”. They held an impromptu meeting at Capital Hill in Lilongwe to map out the way forward after the failed ‘fushing expedition’ at Namuleri Farms.

Political observers have been unequivocal in framing the police action as part of a broader pattern of state pressure against opposition leadership. They argue that the timing, scale and visibility of the operation — involving a large contingent of uniformed officers at a private commercial farm — raise serious questions about proportionality and the politicisation of law enforcement.

Those concerns have been amplified by recent events in Parliament. During the just-ended sitting, Chithyola Banda was unequivocal in his role as Leader of the Opposition, forcefully challenging the DPP government over its mid-year budget review. He was particularly scathing of newly introduced tax measures, which he described as punitive, regressive, and designed to punish already overburdened Malawians amid deepening economic hardship.

In that debate, Chithyola Banda accused the government of shifting the cost of its own fiscal failures onto ordinary citizens, warning that higher taxes — combined with food shortages and delayed fertiliser distribution — amounted to a dangerous mix. His intervention dominated the parliamentary session and placed the government on the defensive — a political backdrop that has only intensified scrutiny of the police action at Namuleri Farms.

Follow and Subscribe Nyasa TV :