Alfred Chimba

WE ARE PRAISE SINGERS, DON’T TAKE US SERIOUS, OUR JOB IS TO SING-SEER 1

By Alfred Chimba

Nigerian-based prophet Andrew Ejimadu, better known as Seer 1 or Jagaban, has broken character — and broken into a WhatsApp voice note — to deliver what might be the most honest job description of the year.

In an audio making rounds on social media, the self-styled top praise singer and UPND loyalist has declared this election cycle “the most unfunded campaign ever,” and he is heard begging President Hakainde Hichilema to open the taps before voters start opening other doors.

The audio, which sounds like it was recorded at 1am after reading too many complaints from notable party members, starts with Seer 1 greeting “our president” and then diving straight into the grievances he says are flooding his inbox.
Several UPND councilors, he claims, have not received any election money at all. Those who have, got K3,000. And that number broke him. “Three thousand? I thought we would learn something from the Chawama by-election. Yet we’re giving them 3,000 for how many pieces of chicken? How much is one chicken in the market?” he asks.
His solution is simple: K12,000 a month. “We are a government in power,” he reminds everyone, as if the treasury needed a nudge.

“The government in power does not win an election because they have delivered,” he says. “It wins because people feel the shift in the economy. They feel it, they will vote for you.”

He concedes the economy on paper has “stabilized” and is “one of the best in Africa today,” but paper does not buy mealie meal and mealie meal is what wins votes.

The Don of Power says right now, UPND is doing “opposition politics” while sitting in State House.
He alleges that volunteers are expected to sacrifice, go to campaigns hungry, and then buy their own t-shirts and regalia instead of getting them for free.
“What is wrongu wid os?” he asks in his Nigerian accent, with the kind of exasperation usually reserved for a neighbor who borrows your charger and returns it dead.

Then comes the line that turned the clip into an instant classic.
“We are praise singers. Sometimes don’t take what we say seriously. Our job is to praise whether it’s right or wrong. That is why we are called praise singers.”
He basically told the President, and anyone listening, to treat his voice notes like background music and go on the ground to see reality for themselves.

On the ground, he says, people are laughing at UPND cadres. “They call us Abakaso,” he reports, using the Bemba word for stingy.
“When a UPND person approaches someone to come and join the party, they laugh at us that we are suffering. This is reality.”

From there he gets tactical, and a little apocalyptic.
He says the state must intervene directly, he argues: push manufacturers, subsidize mealie meal, cooking oil and other basics until prices “come down drastically.” And if that means spending money, so be it.
“It’s better to lose money and then win an election than to lose the election and yet the reserves have money,” he warns.
Because if UPND loses, “Mundubile and his team will come and squander that money we protected. In fact, they will come and mess it up and take us to prison!”
He imagines a scenario where K6.7 billion is left in reserves for six months after an election loss, only for “one billion” to vanish. Better, he says, to “remove one billion from anywhere and use it wisely during this election,” then recover it over the next five years. It is the political equivalent of using your savings to buy a suit for the interview instead of showing up in slippers.

Seer 1 also offers a post-mortem on UPND’s own political muscles.
The 2021 win, he says, was not because the party was “politically wise.” It was social media. “We are not politically strong.
What has happened in this election has proven to us that we are politically zero, from adoption to campaigns.”
Exhibit A: Chongwe, where he claims five UPND candidates received adoption certificates, and now one of them is fighting the other four while also campaigning against the President.
“What mistake did we make?” he asks, rhetorically, and answers himself: we did not fund, we did not feed, and we did not fix the optics.

He ends where he started, with a prayer and a punchline. He calls for the “spirit of stinginess” to be broken “in the name of Jesus,”.

In other words, Seer 1 has given UPND two things at once: a budget proposal and a disclaimer. The proposal is to spend now, feed people, subsidize food, and make the economy visible before election.

Ok nalema, ndiye venanvelako ivi. But I honestly laughed so hard listening to him.
I like this man🫶🏾
Prophet Seer1 😃

BREAKING NEWS:
Citizens First National Youth Chairperson Maxwell Chongu Resigns, Eyes Kafue West MP Seat

In a major political shake-up ahead of this year’s elections, Maxwell Chongu has resigned from his position as Citizens First National Youth Chairperson with immediate effect.

Chongu, who was also positioning himself as an aspiring Member of Parliament for Kafue West, confirmed his resignation during a brief phone interview earlier today.

Speaking to Alfred Chimba in a telephone interview, Chongu said the decision was personal and strategic as he refocuses his political path and that at the moment he remains partyless.