Oswago denies involvement in the chicken gate scandal

Former CEO of the defunct Interim Independent Electoral Commission (IIEC) James Oswago has dismissed the auditor general’s report which has accused him and other top IIEC officials of mismanaging the procurement of biometric voter registration kits.

Speaking while being grilled by the Parliamentary Accounts Committee (PAC) over the audit queries, Oswago said that the report is inaccurate and unfair to him as he was not involved in the procurement of the tender.

The former CEO had been charged in court by the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) over the procurement saga that reportedly put him at the centre of an alleged Sh50 million bribe involving a UK company.

The UK company, Smith and Ouzman, alleged that ballot paper prices were inflated by up to 38 per cent as “chicken” to senior election officials.

IIEC’s procurement exercise was reportedly marred by mass corruption and irregularities that are blamed in some quarters for the spectacular failure of the electronic voting exercise during the last General Election.

During his grilling in February, IIEC Chairman Issack Hassan maintained his innocence over the ‘chicken’ scandal saying that he was neither a suspect nor a witness in the scandal.

Said he: “Due process should be followed in finding the culprits instead of smear campaigns against those mentioned in the media.”

The EACC had postponed former IIEC’s CEO and local businessman Trevy Oyombra’s grilling indefinitely earlier this year.