Drama as Norman Magaya collapses at Bomas of Kenya

Mr Norman Magaya, the head of Nasa’s secretariat. Agents want his office to pay them. FILE PHOTO | JEFF ANGOTE | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • President Kenyatta’s IT team arrived with their data, according to an IEBC official,  and used random sampling, depending on an application to tell which forms should be randomly picked from the forms available for comparison.

  • They did not spend much time at the auditorium and left after having been satisfied that the Forms 34A selected randomly tallied with the data they had been sent by their agents.

  • Hours later, after the last press conference, at about midnight on Wednesday, Mr Odinga’s team was hunched over their laptops, sipping coffee and munching snacks provided by businessman Jimi Wanjigi.

Suspicion and mistrust between the teams representing President Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga, the main presidential candidates, reigned at the National Tallying Centre at Bomas of Kenya in the wee hours of Thursday.

One of the high points of the dramatic scenes at the auditorium where the teams had been given special access to the server with the Forms 34A was the collapse of Norman Magaya, the head of Nasa’s secretariat.

SERVER

There was also a confrontation between Kikuyu MP Kimani Ichung’wa and Ogla Karani, a member of the Nasa secretariat, as Ms Karani accused the MP of taking photographs of Mr Odinga’s team hard at work.

When the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission announced on Wednesday that the presidential candidates’ agents would be given access to the server on which the forms filled at the constituencies are located, President Kenyatta and Mr Odinga sent their teams.

IEBC CEO Ezra Chiloba told the Nation that the purpose of having the verification team set up on the floor of the auditorium was to avoid the situation in 2013 where the commission was accused of working suspiciously by having the verification done in another building in the compound.

FORMS 34A

President Kenyatta’s IT team arrived with their data, according to an IEBC official,  and used random sampling, depending on an application to tell which forms should be randomly picked from the forms available for comparison.

They did not spend much time at the auditorium and left after having been satisfied that the Forms 34A selected randomly tallied with the data they had been sent by their agents.

Hours later, after the last press conference, at about midnight on Wednesday, Mr Odinga’s team was hunched over their laptops, sipping coffee and munching snacks provided by businessman Jimi Wanjigi.

It was shortly after the press conference ended and journalists left the auditorium, leaving only a few, that Jomo Gecaga, President Kenyatta’s nephew and private secretary, spoke to Mr Chiloba, expressing concern about the large number of people from Nasa checking the data.

JOMO

His concern, he told Mr Chiloba, was that the Nasa team was acting suspiciously by having eight people rather than the chief agent and his IT team comparing the data.

He was also under the misguided impression that the team had plugged their computers into the server.

Mr Chiloba explained that only the IEBC computers were plugged into the server through a router placed in the middle of the floor.

When he asked the Nasa team why they had such a large number there and pointed out that they would have an easier time having many computers and checking the forms available on the IEBC server, the team bristled.

Ms Karani said: “We are feeling intimidated by the presence of Jomo.”

MUHOHO

She and other members of the team told Mr Chiloba: “This is not an IEBC process so let us do our work.”

Mr Magaya was with the team at the time and later went to talk with one of his colleagues at the top row of seats on the right as you enter the auditorium.

Muhoho Kenyatta, President Kenyatta’s brother, had in the meantime arrived and was consulting Jubilee Party’s chief agent for the presidential election Davis Chirchir.

Drama ensued at about 1.15am when Mr Magaya collapsed and was carried out.