Raila Odinga: Kenya’s NIS exporting BVR kits into Uganda, Ethiopia

Kenya’s opposition leader, Hon. Raila Odinga, has accused the National Intelligence Service (NIS) of interfering with Kenya’s on-going voter registration campaign by exporting BVR kits into Uganda and Ethiopia and assisting citizens of the two countries to register in Kenyas election process.

Hon. Odinga announced this through a press statement published on his official website, Rao.co.ke, where he made it clear that the accusations were not baseless as the information they had received was credible.

“NIS is once again heavily involved in the on-going voter registration with the aim of influencing results in August in the same way it did in 2007 and 2013,” he continued.

“NIS interference in the current voter registration involves taking BVR kits across our borders into Uganda and Ethiopia and assisting citizens of the two countries to register in a Kenyan election process,” he added.

According to Hon. Odinga, exporting of the BVR kits is not the only way NIS is interfering with the on-going programe, the agency is also assisting citizens of these neighbouring countries to acquire Kenyan identification documents then helping them cross into Kenya and register as voters.

“The NIS is also interfering with the voter registration process by having youths whose data were collected through the dubious National Youth Service exercise over the last few years and registering them as voters, without their knowledge. This NIS-driven process is responsible for the multiple registrations, shared identity cards and many cases of people who are captured as registered when indeed they had never done so,” added Hon. Odinga.

Hon. Odinga then called on the NIS to let the IEBC do its work as an independent institution, saying that: “The intelligence agency must equally operate as a politically non-partisan and independent institution whose duty it is to safeguard the integrity of the electoral process and not interfere with it,”

“We challenge the NIS to come clean on this matter and assure the country that it is abandoning its disgraceful involvement in the voter registration. It must do this with the full awareness that there will be no country if it does not abandon course it is currently pursuing. Kenyans are not prepared to have the NIS choose for them their next leader again.” He concluded.