Chiloba given ‘lighter’ duties at the IEBC

IEBC CEO Ezra Chiloba will be incorporated to the team that will oversee the repeat polls despite differences with the IEBC chairman Wafula Chebukati.

This decision was reached at in a day-long retreat of the IEBC officials in Nakuru, where the CEO was mandated to prepare an operational plan off of the lessons learnt in the last election.

“We have agreed to review and streamline the operationalisation of the project team for purposes of efficient and effective delivery of the fresh presidential election. The CEO has been tasked to assess the implementation challenges that were experienced during the just concluded General Election and propose a project implementation framework that is aligned with the existing organisational structure,” said Mr Chebukati.

The troubled CEO was also tasked with aligning the project team unveiled by Chebukati to manage the poll, within the organisational structure.

Chiloba’s comeback will be seen as a way of neutralizing things in the IEBC and the political arena, with Jubilee claiming that Chebukati and Raila’s Nasa are in a plot to rig in Raila Odinga in the repeat elections while the Nasa coalition are pointing fingers at the CEO acusing him of choreographing rigging in the August elections.

After the court ruling, Chebukati had disowned any irregularities and asked the secretariat led by the CEO Chiloba.

“It is worth noting that the new commissioners took office seven months ago, without any changes made to the secretariat. To protect the sovereign will of the Kenyan people the commission intents to make internal changes to our personnel and processes as we prepare for the fresh presidential election in sixty days,”  said Chebukati.

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Later on, the Chairman sent a memo to Chiloba demanding answers for issues raised after the Supreme Court audit of the servers among them being the KIEMS kits that were not locked to a specific IP address as agreed, how his(chairman’s) name and password and username were used to alter results without his knowledge, why the satellite phones bought by the commission were not used or failed among other issues.

Further divisions arose when a section of the commissioners came out to rubbish Chebukati’s memo to Chiloba. The accusations by both the Jubilee and the NASA politicians could have further pressured the electoral body to go for a retreat to iron out their differences.