CA Director Francis Wangusi defends Safaricom Limited over Raila accusations

After Tuesday’s altercation on the mobile operator Safaricom by Nasa presidential candidate Raila Odinga over its involvement in the bungled elections, a new twist has emerged.

The Communications watchdog, Communication Authority of Kenya on Wednesday cushioned the service provider from the political feuds that have dragged the Bob Collymore led firm.

“We urge political actors to canvass their agenda in a responsible manner in order to avoid putting into jeopardy the impressive investment and other gains that Kenya has made in the local ICT sector,” CA Director General Francis Wangusi has said in a statement to newsroom.

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The CA has cautioned political leaders against dragging the ICT sector in the country, adding that the milestones that have been achieved have been instrumental across all sectors of the economy.

On Tuesday during a press conference, Nasa presidential candidate Raila Odinga told journalists in Nairobi that Safaricom Limited that it was responsible for the bungled elections, in a conspiracy with IEBC.

Mr Odinga threatened court action against six individuals he claimed were part of the scheme he claimed denied him victory.

Nasa, he said, would institute private prosecution against the fingered Safaricom employees.

"It is a matter of public record that Safaricom was contracted by IEBC to transmit election results from the Kenya Integrated Election Management (Kiems) kits at polling stations to the IEBC servers," said Mr Odinga.

"It has come to our knowledge that one of these VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) terminated at a cloud server registered in Spain but operated in France under control of OT-Morpho. Both VPNs were fully paid for by IEBC."

"However VPNs from Safaricom terminating locally were never set up."

He said Nasa would, by extension, sue Safaricom parent South Africa based company Vodafone.

“The sum total of these developments was that the messing up of Kenyans elections were deliberate acts of conspiracy, omission and commission that are yet to be resolved,” said Mr Odinga.

Thorough Investigations

In a rejoinder, however, Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore, through a statement on Tuesday evening said that the firm transmitted the results to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) cloud servers.

“It was IEBC’s responsibility to transmit results from its servers to the tallying centres and this was publicly available information.

"Contrary to what is alleged in the Nasa statement, results from KIEMs kits from Safaricom zones, were transmitted and are on the IEBC web portal,” Mr Collymore said in the statement.

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Mr Collymore, however, said that the company was ready for any investigations.

“This action is callous and unnecessary,” the CEO said.