Raila Odinga claims NIS interfering with voter listing

Opposition leader Raila Odinga has accused the National Intelligence Service of being used by the Jubilee administration to interfere with the ongoing voter registration exercise.

Mr Odinga on Tuesday claimed that the spy agency was facilitating the importation of people from Uganda and Ethiopia to register as voters with plans for them to vote for Jubilee in the August election.

“We have credible information that the National Intelligence Service (NIS) is once again heavily involved in the on-going voter registration with the aim of influencing results in August in the same way it did in 2007 and 2013,” Mr Odinga said in a statement.

“NIS interference in the current voter registration involves taking BVR kits across our borders into Uganda and Ethiopia and assisting citizens of the two countries to register in a Kenyan election process.

"The agency is also assisting citizens of these neighbouring countries to acquire Kenyan identification documents then helping them cross into Kenya and register as voters,” he added.

He said the intelligence agency must operate as a politically non-partisan and independent institution whose duty is to safeguard the integrity of the electoral process and not interfere with it.

“We challenge the NIS to come clean on this matter and assure the country that it is abandoning its disgraceful involvement in the voter registration,” he said.