BBI signatures presented to IEBC drop to 4.4m from 5.2m collected

Signatures for the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) that were presented to the electoral commission have dropped to 4.4m from 5.2million earlier collected.

BBI Secretariat Co-Chairperson Dennis Waweru cited internal verification as the reason behind the drop.

“As you are aware, the minimum requirement is 1 million signatures and so we have decided to submit 4.4million signatures. Wale ambao wanafikiri wanafikiri wanaweza pinga hii process tunataka kuwaambia the bus has left. The only thing you can do…unaweza kimbia uchukue taxi ama nduthi ukimbie you catch up with us because we are not going to stop,” he said.

According to the former Dagoretti South MP, the BBI train is unstoppable.

On Thursday, he and his co-chair Junet Mohamed handed the BBI signatures and the bill to the electoral commission chief Wafula Chebukati at the IEBC headquarters.

“We are waiting for your favorable reply and for ease of processing this verification..sisi ni watu digital…and because we want you to do it within a very short time tumeleta hapa soft copy of all that we have collected,” Waweru said.

On his part, Chebukati informed the BBI Secretariat that the electoral commission will only start verification once they get the budget for it.

“As a commission our work starts here, after receiving the signatures. The soft copy will save us the trouble of typing out the hard copies. We shall now proceed and request for a budget from the National Treasury. As soon as we get the budget and exchequer then we shall now get a team…our team is already available…we have a referendum committee which will undertake the exercise of signature verification,” Chebukati said.

He noted that the IEBC will be giving periodic updates on the process and urged Kenyans to avoid speculation as information will be available.

Additionally, Chebukati stated that the entire process would be conducted in adherence to COVID-19 regulations from the Health Ministry.