12 Serious Questions Chebukati Wants Chiloba to Answer

IEBC Chairman Wafula Chebukati has further stoked fallout embers after issuing official correspondence bearing questions he wants embattled IEBC CEO Ezra Chiloba to address. Chebukati had earlier left out Chiloba from the team he formed to handle the forthcoming repeat Presidential polls.

1. First off, Chebukati wants Chiloba to explain why he contradicted the commission’s position on a memo he (Chiloba) issued to staff on 1^st September 2017.
2. Chebukati pointed out that the commission contracted Al Ghurair to print ballot papers and various statutory forms, with approved security features, for the August 2017 elections. The chairman wants Chiloba to explain what happened to the printed forms meant to have the said features. In this question Chebukati is pointedly referring to the use of forms that lacked security features in the official tallying of presidential votes.
3. Thirdly, Chebukati wants his CEO to explain if the commission received printing and scanning machines from Messer MFI, where they were availed, and why they failed to work, if any.
4. The commission acquired satellite phones at a cost of Kshs 848 million. These were supplied to each constituency and county tallying centre. Chebukati states that none of these worked and wants an explanation as to what occasioned the “massive” failure.
5. Chebukati notes that Mr. Paul Mugo and Mr. Boniface Wamae, under instructions from ICT Director Mr. James Muhati wrote a memo to the chairman confirming creation of an account with username and password in the names of the chairman without his knowledge or consent. This account was used to execute 9,934 transactions. Mr. Chebukati wants Chiloba to take action against the said persons and report back to him before close of business today.
6. The Chairman wants Chiloba to explain what went wrong with KIEMS transmission after 10,366 polling stations (with 4,636,556 voters) sent text results without accompanying Forms 34A as required by law.
7. The chairman wants his CEO to explain why 595 polling stations failed “or otherwise” refused to send any results for the presidential election.
8. Chebukati wants Chiloba to explain why the commission “adopted and used” an insecure server, why the server was used for daily operations before the elections and why ICT staff used passwords different from their IEBC ones.
9. Chiloba needs to explain why Orange (now Telkom) and Airtel were assigned to provide (network) service to KIEMS Kits in areas where they had poor to no coverage while Safaricom had adequate coverage in those areas.
10. Chebukati wants Chiloba to explain why some voter’s details were missing from the KIEMS database while they had been identified by the same system during validation.
11. The chairman wants to know why 682 polling stations had an equal number of rejected votes.
12. Lastly, the chairman wants to know why location features (GPRS and Geo-fencing) were switched off from 5^th August, 3 days to the election.

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The chairman, and the rest of Kenyans are eagerly awaiting for Mr. Chiloba’s response to these grievous concerns.