Odinga had accused one of the firms—Safaricom of colluding with a French firm OT-Morpho to manipulate the results/FILE
NAIROBI, Kenya, Sep 27 – The Communications Authority of Kenya (CAK) says there were no transmission failures by any of the mobile operators contracted to transmit results for last month’s election contrary to claims by Opposition leader Raila Odinga.
Odinga had accused one of the firms—Safaricom of colluding with a French firm OT-Morpho to manipulate the results.
“In line with our oversight responsibility as the ICT sector regulator, the Authority directed the mobile operators to report any cases of transmission failure to us. No cases of transmission failure were reported to us,” he said.
In a statement which was a veiled response to Odinga’s claims of alleged manipulation of election results by Safaricom, Wangusi cautioned against what he termed as “blanket ‘lynching’ of investors in the strategic sector” and instead urged those aggrieved to canvass their agenda responsibly to avoid jeopardising gains made in the local ICT sector.
“We implore politicians to report any alleged election malpractices on the part of industry players to the relevant law enforcement agencies,” he said.
Wangusi has appealed to Kenyans not to lose faith and confidence in technology even as the country prepares for the repeat presidential poll set for October 26.
“ICTs have been successfully deployed and embraced in all facets of life in the country, including banking, business, education, health, agriculture and government services just but to mention a few,” he affirmed.
“The country stands to benefit in a big way if the current levels of investment and adoption of ICT are sustained. It is, therefore, the responsibility of all well-meaning Kenyans to support investors in the sector and to undermine public confidence in ICTs.”
Safaricom through their Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Bob Collymore, also issued a statement defending itself against Odinga’s accusations and welcomed any formal investigation on its involvement in the elections to unearth the truth.
“Safaricom would like to state that we discharged our contractual obligations strictly in accordance with our contract and the law,” Collymore said in a statement.
The company further termed reckless mentioning of innocent Safaricom staff members.
“Safaricom is deeply concerned that the NASA statement has recklessly gone ahead to mention innocent Safaricom staff members needlessly endangering them and their families,” he said adding that “the action is callous and unnecessary.”
In the 2017 Presidential election petition, irregularities in the transmission of results formed a huge part of the proceedings with the Supreme Court later raising grave concerns about the failure of the IEBC to open its computer servers to the court.
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