For their own fame, prestige and public relations, bodies from outside this country such as African Leadership Magazine are free to engage in any foolery they deem fit and scheme to dress our leaders such as President Peter Mutharika in funny garlands.

That is their choice and the magazine—which claims to tell African stories from an African perspective while evolving solutions to peculiar challenges being faced by the continent today—exercised this freedom last week when it awarded Mutharika with its African Leadership Award.

Unfortunately that is where the agreement ends with me because the story afterwards changes as it is one of insult and disrespect.

The reasons that magazine gave for the award to Mutharika go something like he has impacted positively on Malawians with his exceptional leadership and that he is a champion of the masses.

I repeat the magazine is free to give the President any award but what it should avoid is telling lies about Malawi and its people.

For the record, Malawi is a poorest country in the world and this fact comes out virtually on any development index anybody in the world cares to release.

Its masses are languishing in abject poverty due to lack of basic necessities such as food and drugs.

As I am writing this, some are staring into the jaws of death as they have no food due to the bad weather conditions last year.

Malawi’s economy has always been in doldrums for many Malawians still rely on subsistence and back breaking rain fed agriculture with tobacco, a crop that nobody wants in the world, as the main stay.

Poor farmers have been cheated for long that their governments are doing something to diversify crops and find a better market for their produce but it has been what it is—lies.

While we have a lake that runs almost the length of the country and with rivers that criss-cross it, irrigation has eluded us as it has been treated as a by-the-way thing.

Day to day problems such as energy deficiency and water problems have dogged the nation as long as anybody can remember and Malawians have just gotten used to them.

The little resources that go into the national kitty are plundered mercilessly by an evil cabal of politicians, their families and friends to line up their pockets through fraud and corruption.

The African Leadership Magazine should know better than to be told that these problems have gotten worse since President Peter Mutharika ascended to power in 2014 as he has done little to solve them, if at all.

The magazine claims that its objective is to tell the African story but I am not sure what story it tells about this African country, Malawi.

Ours is one long sad story of hunger and depravation. It is about the masses dying like flies in hospitals across the nation as there are no drugs. It is about lack of food and decent housing. It is about low quality of education.

We are a broken country that has no vision to do anything as those that we entrust to change our destiny are not up to it and are busy doing something else

All this is down to deficient leadership and President Peter Mutharika is at the centre of it all.

He cannot be called a champion of the masses at all and anybody calling him as such is insulting Malawians, pouring hot pepper mixed with salt on their gaping wound.

What is making all this especially poignant is the fact that it is coming on the back of an Ethiopian university awarding the President an honourary degree again using a pack of lies to the effect that he has ended electricity blackouts and water shortages when the opposite is true.

I say again, this is insulting and it sucks big time.