IEBC chairman Wafula Chebukati has demanded that CEO Ezra Chiloba explain why some forms printed by Al Ghurair had no security features.
In a memo seen by The Informer, Chebukati detailed numerous failures by the secretariat that formed a key part of the Supreme Court proceedings.
“Respond and explain what happened to the printed forms that were meant to have various approved security features and names of candidates printed in accordance with the ballot proofs,” he said.
The Opposition, led by NASA chief Raila Odinga, opposed the hiring of Al Ghurair Printing & Publishing to produce and supply election materials.
Raila and his team claimed the printer had ties with President Uhuru Kenyatta but both the President and Al Ghurair bosses denied this.
While making submissions at the Supreme Court on Raila’s petition against Uhuru’s victory, lawyer James Orengo and others talked of “glaring errors”, the lack of security features being one of them.
Chebukati asked Chiloba to respond and explain whether machines supplied by Messer MFI were functional.
“..and where they were availed and failed to work, explain the failure..,” he said in the leaked memo dated September 5.
The chairman noted the commission spent Sh848m on buying satellite phones but that the phones were not distributed to each tallying centre and constituency as intended.
“Explain what occasioned the massive failure in the devices that would have been used in transmitting the results,” he said.
Chiloba was also asked to give reasons why the IEBC chairman’s password was allegedly used to access the results transmission system.
“Paul Mugo and Boniface Wamae who were under instructions from ICT director James Muhati, through your office, confirmed the creation of username account and a password in the name of the chairperson without my knowledge or consent,” he said.
On August 9, the Opposition leader claimed hackers used the late IEBC ICT manager Chris Msando’s identity to access IEBC systems.
Msando, who was to test the KIEMS, was tortured and murdered. Opposition leaders blamed Jubilee but police are still investigating.
“We have caught them. Hackers gained entry into the election database through Msando’s account and directly into chairman Wafula Chebukati’s account,” the NASA presidential candidate told a press conference on that today.
Chebukati said also wants an explanation as to why KIEMS kits used in the election were not locked to specific locations as had been agreed.
“Explain what went wrong with KIEMS results transmission where over 10,366 out of 40,883 polling stations sent text results without accompanying Forms 34A,” he added.
He also tasked Chiloba with explaining why 595 polling stations failed or refused to send any presidential election results.
Chebukati further asked Chiloba to state why the IEBC adopted and used a porous file server system to transmit Forms 34B.
He said this was “in the stead of creating and using a secure IP address which made it easy for individuals to manage accounts on each others’ behalf [without] security risk.”
“Further explain why the commission used the subject server for day to day operations prior to the elections and also why the staff in the ICT directorate used passwords different from their IEBC password.”
The chairman also asked Chiloba why IEBC experienced non-validation of individuals voters after the KIEMS identification, essentially obfuscating the logs on voters cleared per polling station to vote.
“Respond on how many voters were subsequently allowed to vote by manual identification and why,” he said.