IEBC bosses ‘caused Kenya a Sh4bn loss’

Commissioners in the electoral body were responsible for overseeing a sequence of procurement irregularities and the mishandling of preparations for the last elections that eventually resulted in the loss of Sh4 billion of taxpayers’ money, the Auditor-General has said.

Edward Ouko told the Justice and Legal Affairs and the Constitution Implementation Oversight committees of the National Assembly that members of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) went to the extent of acting like a procurement committee.

The committees are considering a petition filed by Barasa Nyukuri, a governance and elections expert, who said the commissioners should be sacked for incompetence and lack of integrity.

Mr Nyukuri used the report of a special audit of the procurement of the biometric voter registration (BVR) and electronic voter identification devices (Evids) as part of his evidence against the eight commissioners and chairman Ahmed Issack Hassan.

Ezra Chiloba, the electoral body's chief executive officer, joined the IEBC after the controversial procurement but was roped in because he authorised the payment of a pending Sh259 million bill.

SEQUENCE OF MISSTEPS

Reading his report, Mr Ouko told the MPs: “There is a collective responsibility that all at IEBC must share due to unclear strategy, planning, budgeting and execution of the March 14, 2013 elections.

"IEBC as an institution shoulders the residual responsibility of the shortcomings observed during the 2013 elections as most of the procurements were done on an ad hoc manner”.

He quoted sections of the report showing breaches of the procurement laws by the IEBC. The sequence of missteps in the procurement affected all manner of purchases — from the buying of the transparent plastic pouches for voters’ cards at Sh46.98 million to that of the Evids at $21.5 million (Sh2.15 billion).

So late were some of the Evids delivered that the Auditor-General reported: “Our visit to various regional centres confirmed that some devices were still intact and had not been opened since the officers did not know how to use them”.

The Auditor-General concluded that the Evid failed in most parts of the country, forcing polling officers to use the printed register instead of the electronic one.

“The money that was used for Evid did not, therefore, play any role in improving the 2013 General Election,” he said.

The contract for the Evids, which were supplied by Face Technologies, a South African firm, was also irregularly increased by 26.5 per cent — from $16.6 million (Sh1.6 billion) to $21 million (Sh2.1 billion) — without the correct approvals. A variation of more than 10 per cent has to be approved by the tender committee.

CANADIAN CONNECTION

Mr Ouko’s report details the process that resulted in the government having to step in, get an unnecessary loan and procure the BVR in what then came to be known as a government-to-government deal between Kenya and Canada. That was after the first attempt to buy the kits was deliberately tampered with, he said.

Tim Colby, the first secretary at the Canadian High Commission in Nairobi, had been privy to details of the process and put his country in a prime position to get the deal. The Auditor-General concluded that it was wrong for Mr Hassan to allow Mr Colby to attend the meetings.

“Basically, you are saying that the $21 million we paid did not improve the election, both as recommended by (South African Judge Johann) Kriegler and the commission itself,” said Samuel Chepkong’a, the chairman of the Justice and Legal Affairs Committee.

Asked whether it was normal for commissioners to approve tenders, Mr Ouko said: “Under normal governance structures, you wouldn’t expect that”.

The Auditor-General was asked to investigate the BVR and Evid procurement in June 2013 by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) under the leadership of Budalang’i MP Ababu Namwamba.

The PAC’s eventual report recommended the investigation of commissioners and action against Mr Chiloba.