Ezra Chiloba, the chief executive of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission. PHOTO | DIANA NGILA
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Similar equipment broke down during the 2013 elections leading to suspicion of rigging.
The electoral agency wants Sh3.5 billion to buy electronic identification and results transmission kits similar to those that broke down in the 2013 General Election, leading to suspicion of rigging.
Ezra Chiloba, the chief executive of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), reckons that buying the kits is key to the delivery of credible elections.
“Our focus is on revamping our voters’ kits like Evids (electronic voter identification devices), our nomination systems and result transmission, which all amount to a figure of Sh3.5 billion,” Mr Chiloba told Parliament’s Justice and Legal Affairs Committee on Thursday.
After the disputed 2007 election, which led to widespread violence and over 1,200 deaths, Kenya adopted a multi-billion shilling biometric voter registration system and a results transmission system to restore confidence in the vote tallying process.
More than half of the Evids, or poll books, failed, forcing the IEBC to use the manual system while the real-time electronic transmission of results from the field using mobile phones crashed.
The Evids had a problem with batteries. About Sh1.2 billion was spent on them. The failure of the devices was at the heart of opposition leader Raila Odinga’s petition challenging the declaration of Uhuru Kenyatta as president following the 2013 election.
The Supreme Court upheld Mr Kenyatta’s victory. The cost of the 2017 election is set to hit Sh40.5 billion as the IEBC targets to increase the number of polling stations and register eight million new voters.
In the Budget proposals presented before the Justice and Legal Affairs Committee yesterday, the IEBC sought Sh18.9 billion in the year starting July for voter registration and inspection and Sh16.9 in the year starting July 2017 to manage the voting set for August next year.
It also requires Sh4.6 billion the year following the election.
Mr Chiloba said that if Parliament approves the budget estimates, procurement of electoral materials would start by July 1. “We have a procurement plan and once the budget estimates are approved we should be able to start,” he said.
The electoral agency plans to spend Sh265 million on 106,000 ballot boxes to replace some of the 180,000 that are broken.
There were delays in buying poll kits ahead of the 2013 election, leading to irregular procurement of the faulty equipment.
The head of IT at the IEBC had advised the commission not to buy the kits, saying more time and a parallel technology were needed for them to function optimally.
But the Sh1.2 billion contract was awarded to Face Technologies, which has said it is not to blame for incorrect use of the devices by IEBC staff. Former officials of IEBC have been charged in court.
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Note: The results are not exact but very close to the actual.
