Okoa signatures to be ready end of month

Electoral commission data entry clerks verifying signatures for Okoa Kenya referendum push by the Cord coalition at Utalii Hotel in Nairobi on February 10, 2016. PHOTO | ROBERT NGUGI | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Mr Chrispine Owiye, the validation exercise leader, said the process is painstaking and must be done carefully.

  • The team leaders said they need more money to speed up the process.

  • Cord coalition collected the 1.4 million signatures to force a referendum for the amendment of the Constitution.

The verification of the Okoa Kenya referendum signatures is likely to be completed by the end of this month, the electoral commission has said.

But Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission admitted that it is a painstaking process “which must be carefully done”.

Mr Chrispine Owiye, who is leading a team of 100 clerks and 25 supervisors at Utalii Hotel in Nairobi in entering the names of those who have signed the petition into a data base, said the earliest they can be ready is on February 25.

“Some names and signatures are not in very good handwriting but we are doing our best to capture the date in the best way possible. The process is fairly long and involving,” he said.

VALIDATING ENTRIES

“We are doing data entry, quality assurance and validating the entries. We will then verify the signatures and names of those who signed the Okoa Kenya petition,” he said  during a media tour at the verification centre at Utalii College Hotel in Nairobi.

He said although the commission had received Sh20 million for the verification, they need more money to speed it up.

Mr Owiye assured that the 1.4 million signatures collected by the Cord coalition in its bid to amend the Constitution would not be tampered with.

“Our clerks have taken the oath of office whose breach comes with serious punishment by law and therefore the work is above board,” he added.