A little bird in Tanzania’s Ikulu has whispered to Crazy Monday that Mwalimu Magufuli’s impressive first few weeks in office has put him at loggerheads with fellow presidents in East Africa; they first kicked him out of their WhatsApp group and are now not picking his phone calls!
Our informer reveals that Magufuli’s overzealous fight against graft, laziness and wastage in government has put his peers in foul mood. They are sulking, claiming he is making them look bad.
Apparently, whenever poor Magufuli rings his peers to exchange views and ideas on the state of the region, his calls go unanswered.
“The most common excuse he has been getting is that they are in a meeting. But, surely, no one has meetings for a whole consecutive week that runs into the wee hours of the night,” said a source at the presidential residence in Tanzania.
It is understood that some are refusing to pick his calls to avoid a situation where Magufuli might start talking about how his day was, mentioning stuff like how he fired several corrupt officials; participated in clean-up exercises; paid impromptu visits to hospitals and government ministries, reading lazy staffers the Riot Act and so on.
The fear is that they will have nothing worth talking about and that will only make them feel bad about themselves and perhaps even influence them to do something positive for their people, contrary to what they had in mind when they were running for office!
The beef between Magufuli and his peers has even extended to social media. So peeved are his peers that they have even ‘unfriended’ him on Facebook, and have also stopped ‘following’ him on Twitter.
Public holidays
A source disclosed that Magufuli has also found himself out of the EA president’s WhatsApp group where they gossip and share jokes, naughty pictures and videos.
And when news item to do with Magufuli come up on television, some EA presidents reportedly change channels or switch off the TV and walking out of the room in a huff to the shock of their family members.
As things stand now, chances of Magufuli getting invited to any of the East African states are as high as the number of public holidays Tanzanians are likely to enjoy in his reign!
Or the number of times Comrade Bob can outlast Magufuli in doing push-up exercises! This is because of fears his would-be hosts harbour concerning what he might do during his visit.
“For one he might wake up one morning and start cleaning and collecting garbage outside his hotel,” a source close to one of the EA presidents who has sworn he would rather die than invite Magufuli revealed.
“Or he might refuse state dinner and choose instead to eat at a roadside kiosk, only to get food poisoning and is rushed to a poorly run referral hospital, where he ends up firing the hospital chief not knowing he is from the president’s tribe! My friend, that guy can land someone’s government in a diplomatic row with Tanzania!”
Magufuli sends ‘please call me’
Rumours of an emergency EAC heads of state summit have also been swirling around with the agenda being to ask Magufuli to slow down and stop being a ‘show off’ because he is threatening his peers’ jobs.
This comes at a time when cases of depression among non-Tanzanians in the region has been on the rise, with many of them asking God what they did that He didn’t love them enough to have ensured they were born in Bongo Land.
But amidst all the rumours of the cold shoulder Magufuli is getting from his peers in the EAC, some wags believe they are unfounded and if they are it’s for a totally different reason than the one being peddled.
“I believe the reason his calls are not being picked is because of austerity measures he has put in place,” hypothesised one wag.
“He’s not actually calling but flashing and sending ‘please call me’ text messages in the spirit of cost-cutting! … that’s why no one’s picking!”
-sde.co.ke
