IEBC Official Killed In Mombasa After Appointment To Manage Elections

48-year-old Aisha Akinyi Abubakar was killed in an attack at her home

Viral Tea Ke Writer Viral Tea Ke Writer
Jan 5, 2025 - 16:58 Updated: Jan 5, 2025 - 17:04
0
IEBC Official Killed In Mombasa After Appointment To Manage Elections
IEBC officials guiding voters at a polling station. /FILE

An Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) official who was reported to have recently been appointed as Acting North Coast Regional Election Manager was murdered in Mombasa County.

48-year-old Aisha Akinyi Abubakar was killed in an attack at her home while her 18-year-old son was seriously injured after two armed men broke into the premises in Utange, Kisauni Sub-County at 3 am on Sunday, January 5.

Police revealed that preliminary reports indicated that the two, one of them masked, were armed with a crowbar and a knife. They accessed the house through the kitchen and Abubakar’s son was injured when he went to rescue her.

Verification process at the Bomas of Kenya during the 2022 general elections. /MARTIN WACHIRA.TWITTER

“We are coordinating with the family and also condole them over this tragedy. At this juncture, we are pursuing several leads, and it seems to be a mission targeted specifically on the victims for reasons yet to be established,” Mombasa County Police Commander Peter Kimani explained, adding that the matter was being investigated by homicide detectives from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) together with the Bamburi Police Station police chief.

The deceased’s family disclosed that Abubakar’s son was admitted to hospital after sustaining serious head injuries.

A relative revealed that the robbers, who gained entry into the compound by jumping over the fence, broke into a safe and took away some IEBC documents as well as a TV set, her phone and other household items.

An IEBC official in Kilifi who requested anonymity for lacking authority to comment on the matter revealed that Abubakar’s appointment letter had been sent to the office in December 2024, but was yet to collect it. "I spoke to her yesterday and she was to come for it,” the official was quoted by Nation.Africa.

Before this appointment, she had served in other different capacities, including as coordinator in Magarini Constituency.

IEBC was yet to release a statement regarding the incident at the time of publishing this story. The matter has since generated a lot of public debates, especially on the safety of electoral officials.

The incident occurs amid growing demands from Kenyans for the reconstitution of the electoral body, a process that has faced delays with less than three years remaining until the general elections.

This incident borders that which occurred two years ago whereby the returning Officer for Embakasi East Constituency, Daniel Mbolu Musyoka, was murdered during the August 2022 elections. The official was abducted in Embakasi East Constituency during the transition period after the elections.

This was a reminder of a 2017 incident whereby the IEBC's former ICT manager Chris Msando, vanished before he was found dead four days later in Kikuyu alongside the remains of a young woman whose identity was eventually determined to be Carol Ngumbu.

Hours after he went missing, his car, a Land Rover Discovery, was found in Roysambu, Nairobi County and one of the first people to discover it was Gatundu South MP, Moses Kuria.

Msando had barely been in the position for two months when his predecessor was fired for failing to work with the audit company hired to purge the voter list.

He was murdered just days before the general elections on August 8, 2017, and he expressed confidence that the elections would not be manipulated since the electronic voting system he had helped build could not be hacked.

Murdered Embakasi East Returning Officer Daniel Musyoka. /STANDARD DIGITAL

Tags: