NASA witnesses seek to prove electoral fraud

NASA leader Raila Odinga, principal Kalonzo Musyoka, lawyer Amos Wako and Senior Counsel James Orengo

Amani National Congress (ANC) secretary general Godfrey Osotsi, a cyber-security experts and NASA’s agent in Embu County Moses Wamuru are among witnesses lined up in the Raila Odinga petition.

The witnesses, in sworn affidavits, claimed that IEBC bungled the elections leading to Raila’s loss.

They accused the electoral commission of violating the law and exposing its ICT system to manipulation and aiding the ejection of NASA agents from polling stations in Jubilee strongholds.

Apprielle Oichoe, who describes himself as a cyber-security expert, a private consultant and PhD student in cyber society, said IEBC ought to have deployed a tamper-proof system.

“Non-authenticated, non-prescribed results through the form and format that is unknown to law found itself in the IEBC public portal. This raises questions of integrity of the data,” he said.

Oichoe further claimed that on August 11, only 29,000 forms 34A were available, when the IEBC declared the winner of the presidential election, yet they were not authentic.

“The commission declared results with Forms 34A whose authenticity was questionable as some of them when compared to those collected from agents in the field seem to contain different figures, same to Form 34Bs,” he states.

Oichoe added: “The IEBC made an announcement two days to the elections that 11,000 polling stations lacked 3G and 4G network and Forms 34 could not be generated through the prescribed electronic transmission. The forms that have been mapped out from agents plus the Forms 34B generated put to question the authenticity of the results and the commission’s data.”

Mr Osotsi accused the IEBC of either ignoring or lying about NASA’s concerns on the use of technology during the conduct polls. He said IEBC repeatedly assured the Opposition that its system was tamper-proof but used a private cloud to supplement its primary and disaster recovery sites.

“The Communications Authority (CA) advised IEBC against hosting its sensitive data on a private third party cloud that may compromise the security of its systems and data.”

Noted Osotsi: “The advise from the CA was very sound in law but which the commission ignored. The IEBC went against its assurance to the public and NASA coalition about security of its data and systems.”

Dr Nyangasi Oduwo  stated in his affidavit that the results that were relayed by IEBC were not tied to Forms 34A as required by the election law.

“The only reasonable inference from the foregoing is that the results declared by the first respondent were unsupported by credible, verifiable, and accountable prescribed forms as by law required,” he argued.

Uduwo, who works as Mombasa County Governor economic advisor, also stated in his affidavit that he examined 25,000 Forms 34A and detected anomalies which included unsigned documents, and missing presiding officers’ names in 14,000 forms.

He stated in his affidavit that more than 400 forms were from ungazetted polling stations or had similar handwriting or blank spaces.

NASA also filed a complaint over IEBC’s decision to contract Safran Identity and Security (previously Morpho) to host their data in the firm’s cloud.

The IEBC system was compromised, another witness claimed.

“Despite clear advise from the Communications Authority of Kenya advising against hosting a private cloud to supplement the first respondent’s primary and disaster recovery sites given the sensitivity of its systems, it went ahead and contracted OT Morpho SAS (France) and thereby compromised the security of the cloud,”  Prof Kaloki argued.

“They were the result of the first respondent’s wilful with suspicious intent.”

Moses Wamuru, who was NASA’s chief presidential agent in Embu, noted in his affidavit that he recorded instances where the Opposition agents were either locked out of polling stations or thrown out.

Mr Wamuru wrote that on Election Day, NASA presidential agents were locked out of Thigingi Primary School in Kagaari North ward, Runyenjes.

“At Karurumo Polytechnic, the NASA agent noted and raised complaints on voters being given between two to three presidential ballot papers. At one time, the agent confronted the clerk when he witnessed one voter cast eight ballot papers. Later in the evening, the agent was kicked out of the hall by the police under instructions of the presiding officer.”

He adds: “The conduct of IEBC officials and officers from the county commissioner in Embu was wanting. NASA agents were harassed and blocked from monitoring the process or were harassed and forced to sign statutory forms.”

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