Details of how IEBC failed to sack Ezra Chiloba

With various calls for his resignation at the polls agency, Mr Chiloba stayed put, and according a leaked memo at the commission, he once told off Mr Chebukati when he sought answers to critical questions at the commission.

In a leaked secret memo, Mr Chiloba attacked Mr Chebukati for attempting to cushion the secretariat against election fraud and maintained that the secretariat, which he led, would not be victimized.

Mr Chiloba also questioned Mr Chebukati’s concentration span, faulted his IT knowledge and trashed most of the claims in the initial memo – which documented 12 gravy areas that led to the bungled elections.

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These responses have been the bedrock of Mr Chiloba’s continued stay at the commission despite pressure on him to quit.

“The election was conducted by the commission comprising of commissioners and the secretariat, who by law bear joint responsibility. This explains why in the petition, both the chair and the secretariat personnel filed affidavits in response to the various allegations,” Mr Chiloba had fired back at Chebukati.

Apparently before he filed a response back to Mr Chiloba on the 12 issues that preceded the annulment of August 8 polls, the CEO appeared suspicious of the memo, its origins and purpose. He argued that the memo has not taken into account all reviewed information.

On the claims of Chebukati’s username that was used to undertake 9,934 transactions, Mr Chiloba threw it over back to Mr Chebukati, reminding him of a briefing where it was explained to him what would happen with his username.

“I have followed up the issue with the ICT team and the feedback I have is that they were also not fully satisfied with the level of concentration during the briefing. In essence there was a communication problem that must be addressed going forward,” he said.

The CEO was referring to an August 7 briefing between the commission’s ICT team and the commissioners at Bomas of Kenya in which the commission was allegedly taken through the work flow of the Forms 34Bs.

Chiloba also reminded the chair of a July 25, 2017 commission meeting which approved the work flow and which indicated that two designated staff would be appointed to download Form 34Bs from the system on behalf of Chebukati since it was a clerical function.

“I understand the 9,934 transaction log activities are proper since they relate to normal access and retrieval functions in the context of the secure SFTP, and therefore, there should be no cause for worry,” he signed off the matter.

Chebukati’s claims on switching off of geo-fencing and GPRS features were rebuffed with a small lecture: “First all, I am informed that GPRS and Geo-fencing features mean different things. GPRS means the 2G/3G/4G feature on the device. This feature was always on for the purposes of transfer of data.”

On the geo-fencing, Chiloba claimed that it was never part of the KIEMS kit requirement and that it could not have been switched off since it was never there in the first place. Chiloba also took on Chebukati for alleged contradiction of the commission position with regards to the invalidated results. He said his memo to the commission secretariat and the chairman’s public statement at the same time served different purposes.

“We are not aware of any massive failures of the devices. Indeed, reports obtained from Field ICT Officers show that deployment of satellite devices was a major success,” Chiloba said of the chairman’s inquiry on why Sh848 million worth of satellite phones were not used.

On printers and scanners which allegedly failed to work, Chiloba said: “Based on the feedback received so far, there were no notable failures that significantly impaired the required process.”

He added: “At no point did the commission recommend use of alternative mechanism such as IP address as alluded in your memo. I am informed by the ICT team that IP address system is a unique machine identifier and as such not an alternative to SFTP deployed by the commission.”

On Friday in an interview with Daily Nation, former IEBC Commissioner Roselyn Akombe detailed that CEO Ezra Chiloba was solely responsible for the bungled elections and that he defied the court orders.