Blantyre Water Board has stunned residents by hiring a brand new chief executive just hours after sensationally firing embattled former CEO Yeremiah Chihana — only for it to emerge the utility's dramatic new boss comes with his own murky past.
New CEO Henry Bakuwa, from Mangunda in Thyolo, is far from a stranger to controversy himself. Back in 2022, he was among senior managers dramatically placed on forced leave at the Malawi Gaming and Lotteries Authority while investigators probed a secretive, previously undisclosed bank account through which more than K600 million reportedly vanished without a trace.
In an explosive twist at the time, Bakuwa later made bombshell allegations of his own, claiming in written submissions to the Auditor General that politicians had received payments from the account.
The named politicians fiercely denied the claims, while MAGLA insisted the Auditor General's findings did not substantiate any allegations of payments to ministers, politicians or public officials.
Bakuwa's shock appointment comes just a day after Chihana's dramatic downfall was made public, with news emerging he had actually been dismissed on 5 October.
According to a letter dated that same day and signed by Board Chairperson Stanley Chirwa, the sacking followed bruising disciplinary proceedings over alleged misconduct — proceedings Chihana didn't even bother to attend, despite being given a fair chance to defend himself.
Undeterred by his absence, the Disciplinary Committee pressed ahead regardless, weighing the evidence before delivering its damning findings and recommendations straight to the Board.
At a crunch meeting on 5 October, the Board of Directors delivered its brutal verdict: Chihana's conduct amounted to full-blown gross misconduct under BWB's own Staff Service Regulations.
He has now been ordered to immediately hand back every single piece of Board property in his possession — documents, files, computers, vehicles, keys, access cards, the lot. Chihana has remained conspicuously silent on the matter.
The list of allegations against the disgraced former CEO makes for jaw-dropping reading. Among six formal grounds of gross misconduct, Chihana stands accused of unilaterally announcing the Board would write off clients' water bills without directors' approval, splashing cash-strapped Board funds on an unauthorised vehicle for his own wife, securing a staggering unauthorised K500 million overdraft from First Capital Bank, sacking senior staff without Board sign-off, and even improperly orchestrating the arrest and detention of fellow BWB directors.
Adding to his misery, the Supreme Court of Appeal in Blantyre delivered a crushing blow of its own yesterday, dismissing Chihana's desperate application for a stay order and injunction against his suspension.
A powerful panel of seven justices, led by Deputy Chief Justice Lovemore Chikopa, firmly told him to take his fight to the Industrial Relations Court instead, ruling the dispute was fundamentally an employment matter.
Bakuwa, meanwhile, is no newcomer to BWB's executive corridors. A qualified chartered accountant boasting a Bachelor of Commerce in Accountancy from the University of Malawi, he previously spent over eight years inside the utility, first joining as Director of Finance back in December 2010 before rising to Acting CEO in September 2014 following a major institutional shake-up.
During that earlier stint, Bakuwa notched up genuine achievements, including signing off on the hefty US$23.5 million Likhubula Water Supply Project contract in 2017, and steering the utility through a brutal fiscal crisis later that same year — introducing tough austerity measures to freeze staff loans and allowances as BWB buckled under a crushing K10 billion debt pile, including an unpaid K1.8 billion electricity bill owed to ESCOM.
But it's his subsequent spell at MAGLA that continues to cast a dark shadow over his reputation. In 2022, Bakuwa found himself at the centre of a explosive National Audit Office forensic probe into more than K600 million in suspicious cash flows funnelled through a secret, unapproved bank account at FDH Bank.
The account, quietly opened in June 2019 without board or executive knowledge, saw a string of massive cash withdrawals via individual cheques — including K15.8 million in May 2020, K15 million in June 2020, and a further K24.7 million in July 2020.
The scandal exploded into full-blown political drama when Bakuwa dramatically claimed in submissions to the Auditor General that K43.4 million from the mystery account had been funnelled to politicians to secure passage of the MAGLA Bill. He didn't hold back on names either, pointing the finger at several senior figures including then-Cabinet Minister Richard Chimwendo Banda — who furiously denied the explosive claim and hit back with a staggering K300 million defamation lawsuit.
Following damning audit findings that uncovered unauthorised personal benefits and allowances, Bakuwa was suspended and faced formal disciplinary proceedings of his own — only to dramatically resign in November 2022, just days before his scheduled hearing.
While he was never tried or convicted in a court of law, his sudden exit left a trail of unanswered questions hanging over his name.
Now, Bakuwa finds himself stepping back into BWB at a moment when public trust in the utility has been left in tatters — with critics warning his appointment, a figure still shadowed by an unresolved K600 million scandal replacing a CEO axed for gross misconduct, risks simply trading one managerial storm for another entirely.
But amid all the boardroom chaos, scandal and legal drama, what Blantyre residents actually want couldn't be simpler: water, flowing reliably from their taps — not yet more turmoil in the boardroom.
