• MUFUMBWE Member of Parliament Steven Masumba flashes the PF party symbol after climbing onto a Zambia Police truck, enroute to prison, after the Lusaka High Court upheld his 12-month jail sentence for forging an accounting technician diploma in Lusaka yesterday. Picture by CHUSA SICHONE

By PERPETUAL SICHIKWENKWE?? –
THE Lusaka High Court has upheld the conviction and 12-month jail sentence slapped on former Youth and Sports deputy minister Steven Masumba for forging an accounting technician diploma which he used to earn himself a job.
Judge Chalwe Mchenga said when he passed judgment in a packed court room yesterday that the Mufumbwe Member of Parliament (MP) should in fact count himself lucky to have been given such a sentence.
Mr Justice Mchenga said Masumba’s one-year jail sentence with hard labour by deputy director of local courts Wilfred Muma, when he sat as a magistrate in November last year, did not come as a shock to the High Court because it was neither too high nor too low.
This is in a matter in which Masumba had appealed against his conviction and sentence of 12 months imprisonment after he was found guilty of forging the diploma from the National Institute of Public Administration (NIPA).
Mr Muma jailed Masumba after establishing that he knew that he had not passed all the subjects but graduated from the college and later used the document to find employment at Lusaka Business School.
But Masumba, through his lawyer Mutakela Lisimba appealed to the High Court advancing four grounds that Mr Muma erred in law and fact when he convicted and sentenced him for obtaining pecuniary advantage by false pretences when he forged his accounting technician diploma.
In his judgment yesterday, Mr Justice Mchenga upheld the sentence saying the prosecution proved its case against Masumba.
Mr Justice Mchenga said unlike Masumba’s claims that the prosecution evidence was contradictory, his analysis of the same evidence revealed that the prosecution witnesses actually complimented each other as they all proved to the court that he fraudulently obtained the certificate and used it to find employment.
He said all the ingredients of the case against Masumba were established by the prosecution and Mr Muma could not be faulted for convicting him.
Mr Justice Mchenga said there was no miscarriage of justice by the magistrates’ court and that Masumba should even consider himself lucky for getting such a sentence.
He said Masumba knew that he obtained the certificate erroneously and, as such, he should not have used it in the manner he did.
“The appellant knew that he had obtained the certificate erroneously and, as such, should not have used it to acquire employment for himself,” Mr Justice Mchenga said.
“He was dishonest in his conduct and his sentence did not come to this court with shock, as it was?neither too low nor too high.”
In an interview later Masumba said he was considering resigning his parliamentary position.
Masumba, however, said that he would consult with people when he is out of prison on his position as MP for Mufumbwe but that he felt it was not morally right for him to continue serving.
He described his incarceration as the will of God which he could not question.?“I feel sorry for the people who voted for me, my family and my mother are shocked” Masumba said.
He said that the outcome of the judgment had an impact on the people that voted for him and he felt sorry for them.
Mr Lisimba in an interview shortly after the verdict said Masumba, who wore a black suit, white shirt and matching shoes, would definitely appeal to the Supreme Court against Mr Mchenga’s decision.