KAIKAI'S KICKER: Chris Msando, IEBC ICT Manager – Lest we forget!

It was a Friday night when Msando mysteriously disappeared in the streets of Nairobi, only for his body to be discovered on Sunday morning in Muguga forest Kiambu County.  A post-mortem examination by government pathologist Johansen Oduor revealed that Msando had died of strangulation.

His right hand also had some deep cuts, suggesting the late IEBCc employee could have been tortured before he was strangled to death. His body was found alongside that of 21-year-old Carol Ngumbu,  a young woman who had just completed her studies at the Kenya Medical Training College.

Initial reports of Msando’s disappearance were typically greeted with false narratives laden with hints of sleaze with Gatundu South MP Moses Kuria even suggesting that the election official was having a good time somewhere in the city suburbs.

Active misinformation characterized conversations about the missing IEB senior manager. The discovery of the body of a woman next to his further sweetened the morbid rumor mills with talk of love triangles and related speculation.

In short, in the first hours of his disappearance and subsequent death, Chris Msando was treated badly and perhaps, deliberately.

Deliberately because, Chris Msando’s killers who remain unknown to date, had an obvious plan to hide their motive. It was obvious that the killers and those who planned Msando’s death did not want the death to be connected in any way to the election which, just like today, was only 11 days away.  And because the killers are not known to date, Msando’s death remains a subject of intense speculation.

Many speculate that Msando died because of his crucial role at the IEBC. As ICT manager, this was the administrator of the electronic transmission of election results – the linkman of the data that flows from the polling station to the national tallying centre. And Chris Msando was confident, even pompous about his election technology.

I remember that week he made rounds on television talk shows and current affairs programmes, praising the system he was managing as robust and foolproof. A day before he disappeared he stated on a television show that the election technology IEBC had put in place was impermeable, assuring a one hundred per cent integrity of the results flows from the polling station to Bomas of Kenya.

And one thing I remember about Msando; he was a confident and highly intelligent and self-assured man, visibly fully in charge of his role and space. In his last interview on TV, Msando assured Kenyans that the IEBC will implement to the letter the judgment of the Court of Appeal on management of election results transmission.

The ruling had guided that election results declared at the polling station were final and Msando went for a foolproof pipe for the same.  Speculation is, that became his death sentence and that his killers never wanted a foolproof electronic results system.

Nothing has happened to challenge that speculation to date. No one has ever been arrested or charged with the murder of Chris Msando. His killers simply disappeared into thin air and may well be somewhere watching us yapping away, apparently in futility.

Well, with Msando’s murderers remaining unknown and free, all those pained by his needless death and all those driven by the spirit and heart of justice are left with the hope that the corpse of the late Msando took the strict instructions of his mother and the agonizing wailing of his wife, asking for one thing; may his killers never have peace.

That is my kicker