Chaos erupt inside Bomas of Kenya on August 15, 2022 after the Azimio la Umoja One Kenya faction tried to stop the announcement of the presidential election results.
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2022 polls: 48 hours of high drama for Chebukati team at Bomas
What you need to know:
- The following day at 8am, the commission calls a plenary meeting. Events of the previous night are now a subject of discussion in low tones.
- The commission looks cornered as the tension in the country builds. It’s an open secret that the tactics of the two competing sides will collide at Bomas at some point.
- Television screens are filled with exhausted commentators who are talking themselves hoarse. The country has been expecting results and patience is wearing thin on the waiting public.
Personal accounts and multiple interviews corroborated by court documents paint a picture of tension-packed, life-threatening 48 hours for poll officials preceding the declaration of the presidential results a year ago.
The Nation went behind the scenes to speak to people who were at Bomas of Kenya, the National Tallying Centre of the August 9, 2022 General Election, during the critical hours to reconstruct the moments that put the nation on tenterhooks.
At 8pm on August 14, 2022, Azimio la Umoja One Kenya Executive Director Raphael Tuju arrives at the National Tallying Centre – Bomas of Kenya. He appears uneasy and troubled. Mr Tuju proceeds straight to the VIP boardroom where Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) commissioners had turned into a meeting venue.
Mr Tuju finds IEBC chairman Wafula Chebukati in a meeting with his electoral team. He proceeds to ask for an urgent meeting with the IEBC boss, but Mr Chebukati asks him to wait for an hour as he was in a meeting with his team.
At 10pm, Mr Tuju comes back to the boardroom, the chairman’s team, christened ‘critical staff’ were still present. This time, however, Mr Tuju is a bit more forceful and demands an audience.
He explains that his Azimio side has a complaint on the presidential results. According to him, Azimio La Umoja wanted to foil a plot where results were allegedly being “hijacked and changed”.
Team of techies
A team of techies, he says, were on standby somewhere, waiting for returning officers to upload form 34As, they would delete those forms and replace them with their own and upload that new form into the portal. In essence, the results on the portal were not the real results.
Mr Chebukati assures him that the commission was taking his allegations seriously and they would be promptly investigated.
And at 1am, Mr Tuju again storms the office of the chairman at Bomas. He finds him sleeping on the couch, covered in a Maasai shuka.
Mr Tuju proceeds to produce a bulk of papers and says: “These are the genuine results, Chairman”. He then presents the documents to Mr Chebukati, who glances at them and asks where they are from.
At this time, former Attorney-General and Busia Senator Amos Wako and Kyalo Mbobu, the former Chairman of the Political Parties Disputes Tribunal (PPDT), also walk in.
They are in the company of Jasper Mbiuki, a legal advisor at the Office of the President. Mr Chebukati later calls the other commissioners to join him in engaging the visitors.
Mr Wako politely asks the chairman if he can see him privately and “discuss an urgent matter of national interest.”
Mr Chebukati, Mr Wako and Mr Mbobu walk into the next office for this private meeting.
Mr Wako tells the chairman that he needed to be very careful, listen to the pulse of the nation and “manage results”.
In his advice to the chairman of IEBC, Mr Wako assures him that results management is not a new thing.
Mr Wako exits the room telling Mr Chebukati and his team: “We hope you have understood the weight of the matter and you will do something about it.”
It is at this point that Mr Chebukati calls his chief executive officer Marjan Hussein Marjan, and IEBC legal director Crispine Otieno Owiye for a private meeting.
These accounts are corroborated by court documents filed by Mr Chebukati and Prof Guliye as well as admission by Mr Tuju.
In an affidavit responding to a petition filed by opposition leader Raila Odinga, Prof Guliye disclosed that the meeting occurred at about 3am on Monday, August 15.
“About 3am on the morning of August 15, the chairperson was visited by Raphael Tuju, senator Amos Wako and Advocate Kyalo Mbobu,” Prof Guliye said.
President William Ruto standing next to his deputy Rigathi Gachaua receives a certificate from former Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) chairman Wafula Chebukati at the Bomas of Kenya on August 15, 2022.
“Mr Wako indicated that they had come to ask the commission not to operate ‘in a vacuum’ and that it must consider the link between the election results being declared and the stability of the country which he described as ‘the bigger picture’,” he stated in the affidavit.
Swapping of forms
Mr Tuju has in the past admitted meeting Mr Chebukati in the company of the other commissioners.
Mr Tuju said he met with Mr Chebukati to discuss reports of alleged swapping of forms 34As.
“I brought this matter up and he told me he was busy. So he will not be able to attend to me. So he told me to come later. I came back at 2am and he was sleeping. So I waited until 4am. That is the time that I drew the attention of somebody like Amos Wako, who is a personal friend, and a few others, that we should go and confront him,” Mr Tuju said in response to Prof Guliye’s affidavit.
The following day at 8am, the commission calls a plenary meeting. Events of the previous night are now a subject of discussion in low tones.
The commission looks cornered as the tension in the country builds. It’s an open secret that the tactics of the two competing sides will collide at Bomas at some point.
Television screens are filled with exhausted commentators who are talking themselves hoarse. The country has been expecting results and patience is wearing thin on the waiting public.
There is hardly anything new to say on live television while pictures of Bomas auditorium are fixed on screens.
Results have taken too long to come. IEBC has decided not to tabulate results, while television stations dropped counting of results as soon as producers realised that they will end up in the unfortunate state of announcing the results ahead of IEBC.
IEBC commissioners start the plenary by going through what they need to achieve for the day.
“We must announce the results today,” the chairman tells the team. By this time, all results had been verified and the chairman’s personal assistant, Mr Dickson Kwanusu and IEBC legal director Crispine Owiye, were populating form 34C.
This announcement takes a part of the commissioners popularly known as the “Cherera 4” by surprise. They say they have been ambushed.
However, Mr Chebukati says the plan is to announce the results of the remaining constituencies first, possibly by midday, then the final presidential results thereafter.
The adjournment of this plenary meeting sets the ball rolling for dramatic events that preceded the declaration of the results.
Hours later, the commission receives a new delegation at the VIP boardroom.
This time the delegation is led by Kennedy Kihara, the deputy public service boss and the principal administrative secretary, Solicitor-General Kennedy Ogeto, Inspector-General of the Police Hillary Mutyambai and Lieutenant-General Francis Ogolla.
The team identifies themselves as members of the National Security Advisory Committee (NSAC), and promptly ask for a private meeting with Mr Chebukati.
In the meeting, Mr Kihara says he is the group’s spokesperson and proceeds to state their case.
He says NSAC had information that Mr Chebukati wanted to declare results that would plunge the country into chaos.
He says security agencies have intelligence that there was already sporadic violence in Kibera and Mathare akin to the 2007 post-election violence.
But they have some advice — IEBC should declare results that either have Raila Odinga as president or at worst, occasion a re-run of the elections.
The security team says an announcement of William Ruto as president was unacceptable and claim the IEBC would take the blame for plunging the country into violence and chaos.
Mr Chebukati proceeds to ask the commissioners in the room what they thought about the NSAC request.
Moderate results
Vice Chair Juliana Cherera goes first. She says the commission should consider and weigh the views of the NSAC, according to her the commissioners should have an opportunity to see the results and make a consideration thereafter.
Commissioners Justus Nyang’aya, Irene Masit, and Francis Wanderi throw their weight behind Ms Cherera. According to them, the position of NSAC should be considered and the results moderated.
Commissioner Molu says the results should be announced as they are.
Professor Guliye addresses the NSAC team and tells them their message has been delivered and that the commission will have a separate meeting shortly where the matter will be given serious consideration.
Mr Chebukati reassures the ‘visitors’ that the matter was under close consideration and that they had been heard.
With that the NSAC members leave the VIP boardroom. Mr Kihara would later, in an affidavit during the presidential petition, say that NSAC team only went to Bomas to discuss security concerns in relation to delays in results transmission.
But Mr Chebukati said the NSAC delegation wanted the commission to either announce Mr Odinga as the outright winner or ensure a run-off.
After the NSAC left, Mr Chebukati later summoned his legal director and asks him to take the commissioners through a session of Article 138 — qualifications a candidate must meet to be declared winner.
Commissioner Wanderi asks the legal director to stand down. He was telling everyone in the room what they already knew. Regurgitation of the obvious was not necessary, he said.
The Cherera 4 felt the chairman and the other two commissioners were privy to some other processes and they simply were being dragged along.
Since their arrival at the IEBC, the four commissioners felt like strangers, they said the other three commissioners ran rings around them, worked directly with the secretariat and in instances, the staff would know about critical issues before they, as commissioners, were briefed.
As the clock was ticking, this meeting turned into a shouting match where the legal director tried to read Article 138, albeit unsuccessfully.
At that moment, Mr Marjan walks in with his aides, he has a full carton stacked with papers and what appears to be the final results. The CEO’s office and work station was on the other side of Bomas, which was designed for the secretariat to work away from the plenary and the commissioners.
Mr Chebukati then asks the CEO to distribute the results, and he proceeds to hand to every commissioner a three-page document, a summary of results by county. There is pin drop silence in the room.
According to the Cherera 4, this was the first time they were seeing the results, some few minutes after 4pm.
There was also only one set of final results in the carton. On the chairman’s side was a populated form 34C, which was populated by the IEBC legal director and Mr Kwanusu, Mr Chebukati’s aide.
At this point, things move rather quickly, Mr Chebukati tells the room: “You have heard the legal director and seen the results, I am satisfied that I have a candidate who meets the criteria of Article 138. His name is William Ruto.”
He stood and added: “Let’s go and announce the results”.
Ms Cherera, who had been protesting being left out of that final process, told the chairman he can go alone, she wouldn’t be on his side. She said, the commissioners had only seen the results at that very moment and had not been given time to scrutinise the results. She felt ambushed and was uncomfortable to move forward with what she termed as a rushed process.
The commissioners raised a point of law at this point — the IEBC was still within the legal timeline and there was no rush to announce the results. If that final process needed a day, they said, the commission should attempt to satisfy itself.
According to the people in the boardroom at that moment, it was clear that what would happen next was going to be a disagreement of unimaginable proportions.
We have a winner
Trying to push the hand of the other commissioners, the chairman stood up and announced: “We have a winner of the presidential election who satisfies all legal requirements.”
At this point his deputy, Ms Cherera responded: “Go alone and announce him.”
Prof Guliye: “I will come with you, chairman.”
Commissioner Masit: “We need to discuss the results without that, I am also not coming with you.”
Commissioner Bolu: “I will be with the chairman.”
Mr Nyang’aya: “I am not coming with you.”
Mr Wanderi: “You can go alone.”
Mr Chebukati announced the presidential election at around 5.30pm. Later, in a statement, Mr Chebukati claimed the four commissioners wanted him to alter the outcome of the presidential election.
“During a brief meeting held on August 15, 2022, at around 3pm before the final declaration of the presidential election results, the four commissioners demanded that the chairperson moderate the results for the purpose of forcing an election re-run, contrary to their oath of office,” Mr Chebukati said.
“The chairperson refused to yield to this unconstitutional and illegal demand and proceeded to declare the results of the presidential election as received from the polling stations, and contained in Forms 34A, in accordance with the law.”
