With the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) rushing against time to announce the winner of the August 9 presidential election, Kenyans were urged to remain calm and disregard fake news being shared on social media platforms.
Among the latest claims peddled online was that the final Form 34C was uploaded on IEBC's portal on Sunday, August 14.
The Form 34C is the national form that aggregates tallies from the 290 constituencies (detailed in Form 34B). The results are then transferred to Form 34D - which is used to announce the president-elect.
A spot-check by Kenyans.co.ke showed that whereas the IEBC portal showed that Form 34C had been uploaded, the data could not be accessed by members of the public.
An attempt to download the form returned an error message indicating that the data was yet to be made public by the national returning officer, Wafula Chebukati, the IEBC chairperson.
"This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below," read the message.
The Form 34C is dependent on data provided by Forms 34B. The IEBC portal, however, shows that only 274 Forms 34B had been uploaded out of the total 291 forms required.
So far, IEBC has also only validated approximately half of all the Forms 34B uploaded by the constituency returning officers.
A section of Kenyans had already claimed that the presidential contender they supported had won the election arguing that they accessed the Form 34C online.
IEBC chairman Wafula Chebukati has less than 48 hours to announce Kenya's next commander-in-chief as per the Constitution of Kenya.
Article 138(10) of the Constitution dictates that the Commission has seven days from the date of the election to announce the winner of the presidential poll.
"Within seven (7) days after the presidential election, the chairperson of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission shall; (a) declare the result of the election; and (b) deliver a written notification of the result to the Chief Justice and the incumbent president," reads the article.
The official General Election took place on August 9, 2022 and most of the polling stations shut down on the same day at around 5p.m, with a few allowed to extend to compensate delays.
