The personal assistant to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) chairman Wafula Chebukati had unauthorised clearance in the Result Transmission System, the Azimio coalition has claimed.

This emerged on Wednesday during the hearing of the presidential election petition filed at the Supreme Court by the Azimio la Umoja One Kenya coalition leader Raila Odinga and his deputy Martha Karua.

The petitioners have told the Supreme Court that one Dickson Kwanusu had unrestricted access to the IEBC systems even though he was not gazetted as an official allowed to access the system.

According to Senior Counsel Philip Murgor who represents the petitioner, Kwanusu wa invisible but acted at Chebukati’s behest.

“While in this dispute we may not see the fingerprints of Chebukati in the ICT system, we see his palm, his much larger presence through the actions of his assistant,” Murgor said.

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Murgor mentioned that Kwanusu was granted access and privileges to the system and performed the verification of forms 34A 1,743 times and that would have gone unnoticed if the logs were not brought.

"The personal assistant of Mr Chebukati, Mr Dickson Kwanusu, was granted access, but he is not gazetted. So he is invisible. If we had not brought the logs, it would never be known that he had access," he said.

He said the case was not any different from other unofficial direct access to the system by persons who were intent on manipulating the results in favour of the ninth respondent, William Ruto.

Murgor said the results before the Supreme court were corrupt through the unconstitutional compromise of the transmission system.

“What we have before the court is a corrupted and compromised results transmission system which violates the provisions of the Constitution,” Murgor said.

He averred that the illegal access to IEBC systems gave the individuals granted the access powers to intercept and manipulate forms 34A from polling stations before uploading them to the commission’s portal.

He said the previous election was controlled from somewhere else and not by the IEBC.

“…election was controlled from everywhere but not IEBC,” Murgor said.

Raila, through his legal team, submitted to the Supreme Court that Chebukati orchestrated the manipulation of results to favour his chief opponent William Ruto even when the IEBC had boasted of an impenetrable system that could not be hacked.

Murgor said the IEBC system failed to give Kenyans a verifiable and accurate election.

“This demonstrates that the technology deployed by IEBC for the conduct of the polls completely failed the standards of a secure, transparent electronic voting system and thereby yielded unverifiable, inaccurate, and therefore invalid results,” Murgor said.

Murgor also mentioned the three Venezuelan nationals who were arrested at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) during his submission as part of the team that had access to the IEBC system and manipulated the results.