The Returning Officer who was in charge of Embakasi East constituency in the August 8 General Election has revealed that an error was discovered in the documents that declared Babu Owino winner of the parliamentary election.
Speaking during a petition filed by Jubilee Party's Francis Mureithi, Nicholas Butuk stated that he noticed an error in tallying after the winner had been announced.
He revealed that the error was as a result of a wrong formula used in tallying the final results received from various polling centres.
[caption caption="Mr Nicholas Butuk"]
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Butuk, who was based at The School of Aviation tallying centre, however, clarified that the error could not change the outcome of the election although it affected the last four out of the ten candidates who were in the race for the Embakasi East parliamentary seat.
“The first two candidates’ results were however among those results which were never affected and the error could not have changed the outcome of the election,” he remarked.
The Returning Officer also told the court that he was under immense pressure from Babu after misplacing form 35C- which he was supposed to fill.
“During the final stage of the tallying process, I realised that form 35C which is used to declare the winner, was missing.
"I had to look for it first but Babu Owino got impatient and went crazy.
"I was under pressure but I would not have announced different results because he was still the winner from the results we tallied,” Butuk clarified.
Last week, a new petition was filed to seek the removal of Owino from office.
The petition was submitted by Bernard Abuya Momanyi who wants the incumbent stripped of his position as MP after his fight with Starehe lawmaker Charles Njagua aka Jaguar.
[caption caption="Babu's Fight With Jaguar"]
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