Governor defends his poll win, says it was fair and free

Ahmed Abdullahi takes the oath of office as Wajir governor. [File, Standard]

Governor Ahmed Abdullahi of Wajir has defended his victory in the August 9 polls stating that he fairly defeated his opponents.

Mr Abdullahi took to the dock as a witness to discount allegations by Dr Hassan Mohamed that the Wajir governor election was marred by irregularities, stating that the claims are misconceived and has no basis since no evidence has been provided to back them up.

"The petitioner has failed to demonstrate in any way that my victory was unjustified. All the allegations he makes of voter bribery and intimidation are unsubstantiated since none of his witnesses has proved that he was intimidated and stopped from voting," said Abdullahi.

The governor backed up his defence by calling several witnesses including Ahmed Hussein who was his chief agent in Wajir West Constituency which is being contested as having witnessed the voter bribery and allegations.

Mr Hussein is his testimony explained to the election court that the last general election was free, fair and transparent, and that the petitioner's allegations are ill informed, biased, statistically dishonest and mathematically incoherent. Whereas the petitioner had alleged that the governor got more than 90 per cent of the votes in his Wajir West backyard, the witness said that Abdullahi got 12,238 which is 56.8 per cent of the total votes.

"The remaining 43 per cent of the votes were cumulatively garnered by the other gubernatorial candidates in the election including Dr Mohammed, the petitioner," said Hussein.

He said that it is not true that voters were not identified using the KIEMS kits and that in instances where the voters' biometrics could not be deciphered, IEBC had complimentary mechanisms to identify voters.

According to the witness, he received copies of result declaration forms 37A from the agents across the constituency; which he used to undertake an independent tally which tallied with the IEBC declared result.