Malawi deputy chief spy redeployed to ministry of youth
President Peter Mutharika has removed from his position director of National Intelligence Bureau (NIB) Josephy Mwandidya and redployed him to ministry of youth, Nyasa Times understands.
Sources at the State House confirmed to Nyasa Times that Mutharika has indeed removed Mwandidya .
It is alleged that Mwandidya acted on issues which was not related to his powers.
Mutharika hired Mwandidya as Deputy spy Chief in July this year. He is an accomplished political scientist from Georgia State University.
Mwandidya was recently reported to have been nearly shot by armed robbers who have been terrorizing residents of New Naperi in Blantyre by claiming to be ESCOM workers. The robbers were pretending to fix an electricity problem in one’s house and in the process staging a robbery at gunpoint.
According to Police, the armed ESCOM employees were using the Chichiri Faults pick up registration number BR 7669, which is currently in custody at Blantyre Police station.
The ESCOM employees were said to be answering to a fault following a black out in one of the houses at New Naperi but Mwandidya, who was in the area after being tipped, saw that the power to that house was on and he asked them to show their identities, but they could not produce them and started to run away and shooting at him in the process. The bullet luckily missed him and the shooter who was in the ESCOM car, leaving a dent on the tarmac.
Mwandidya, with his team, then confronted the robbers, overpowered them and apprehended them. One of the robbers, identified as Chimwemwe Majiya, was injured during the confrontation and was taken to Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital by the police who also arrived at the scene. The others who have been apprehended were identified as George Shati, Yohane Chilabade, and the driver Charles Milepa.
When pressed, the robbers said were sent on the operation by ESCOM’s Chief Security Officer Precious Mpekasambo who was a former Police Officer and was confirmed to the ESCOM job while on probation by former Malawi president Joyce Banda.
Mwandidya quickly checked with the people at ESCOM to see if they had had a fault report in New Naperi and was told that ESCOM was not aware of the fault. ESCOM added that their job is not to fix house-hold electrical faults unless there is fire or when a transformer has a problem, or if there are sparks on the wires especially outside people’s houses.
