The BBI secretariat clashes with IEBC over sh.241 million required for signature verification
By Christabel Airo
The Building Bridges Initiative secretariat and the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission have clashed over how much money is needed to finance verification of signatures.
According to the poll agency, at least Sh 241 million is required for the exercise to be successful but BBI proponents think the cost has been exaggerated.
Acting Chief Executive Officer of the IEBC Marjan Hussein Marjan said he had written to Treasury requesting for the funds which will be used for among other thing training staff but the exchequer had not responded.
Despite making the request, the Treasury is yet to respond to the request. “We made the request a day after we received the signatures. We asked the National Treasury to give us budgetary support of Sh241 million for the exercise to commence,” said Hussein Marijan.
He added that the only business going on at the commission is handing over of the signatures from the BBI secretariat, serializing and signing of the documents received as well as the signing of papers to confirm the signatures.
Reacting to the electoral body’s budget requested, BBI co-chair of the national secretariat Dennis Waweru said the money was too much especially now that technology can be applied to fast-track the process.
“Sh241 million is too much. This is an exercise that can be done using very minimal resources. We can even do it with just Sh1 million,” he said.
Another source at the secretariat who did not wish to be named questioned why the commission was discussing its budget details in public.
“This is too much money for such an exercise, they are doing so in public to whip up emotions,” said the official.
Third Way Alliance secretary Fredrick Okango questioned the procedure IEBC was going to use to verify the signatures stating that the body could only verify the data of the voter and not verify signatures as they do not have a depository of voters’ signatures.
The BBI roadmap is expected to assent to the amendments made to the Constitution on or before June 14, 2021. In the roadmap, the signature verification exercise is expected to take 30 days beginning December 10, 2020, to January 10, next year after which the commission will be required to submit the referendum Bill to county assemblies by January 18, an exercise that will take the 47 county assemblies a month to pass or reject.
