Odinga Rejects Kenyan Election Outcome, Set For Legal Battle

Former Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga, who lost the August 9, 2022, presidential election by a narrow margin, has rejected the outcome of the vote and vowed to take constitutional steps to challenge it.

Odinga, 77, who made his fifth run at the presidency and secured 48.9 percent of the vote to Deputy President William Ruto’s 50.5 percent, said the head of the electoral commission didn’t follow due process, rendering the results declared “null and void.”

“Today, I do not want to fully address our strategies going forward but it suffices to note that I will be pursuing all constitutional and legal options available to us,” Odinga said at a briefing in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

The dispute and delay in the swearing-in of the new president poses a risk to political stability in East Africa’s largest economy, where previous controversial votes were marred by violence. While a number of Odinga’s supporters took to the streets of Nairobi, the capital, late Monday and set tires alight, the situation was largely calm on Tuesday and there haven’t been any reports of clashes between the two rivals’ backers.

Odinga’s statement came moments after four of the nation’s seven electoral commissioners held a separate briefing and said they didn’t accept the outcome, citing a lack of transparency over the process. It was the second statement the officials released following the result.

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Earlier yesterday, the Election Observer Group, which comprises 5,000 local monitors from civil rights and religious organisations, said the official count from the Independent and Electoral Boundaries Commission was consistent with its parallel tally and the constitution gave the body’s chairman Wafula Chebukati the right to declare the results.

Ruto, 55, said the IEBC had “bent over backward to accommodate everybody,” the election results spoke for themselves and their validity was being questioned by those who didn’t want to accept that they had lost. “The people of Kenya have spoken and we need to respect what they have said,” he told reporters in Nairobi after he was declared the president-elect.

PMB Appoints Musa Counter Terrorism Centre Coordinator

By Jonathan Nda-Isaiah, Abuja

President Muhammadu Buhari has approved the appointment of Rear Admiral Yaminu Ehinomen Musa (rtd) as the pioneer coordinator of the National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC).

According to a statement by his media aide, Femi Adesina, the NCTC is established in the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA) as the coordinating body for the harmonisation of all counter-terrorism and terrorism financing efforts in Nigeria.

The centre is equally charged with the coordination of counter-terrorism policies, strategies, plans and support in the performance of the functions of the national security adviser (NSA), as provided in the Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Act 2022.

Before his appointment, Musa had been the director of the Counter Terrorism Directorate in the ONSA since 2017. He was responsible for the review of the National Counter Terrorism Strategy (NACTEST), and the creation of the Policy Framework and National Action Plan for Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (PCVE), which President Buhari signed into law in 2016 and 2017 respectively.

Additionally, the retired naval officer served as the Nigerian representative at the Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF) for the last 3 years.

His appointment takes immediate effect and will run for an initial term of five years.