• Msando, the former electoral commission's IT manager, went missing exactly five years ago today on Friday July 28, 2017.
• His body was found four days later in a thicket in Kikuyu alongside the remains of a young lady.
Image: FILE
Former IEBC commissioner Roselyn Akombe has expressed optimism that justice will be served over the murder of Chris Msando.
Msando, the former electoral commission's IT manager, went missing exactly five years ago today on Friday July 28, 2017.
His body was found four days later in a thicket in Kikuyu alongside the remains of a young lady who was later identified as Carol Ngumbu.
He had only been in the job for two months after his predecessor was suspended for refusing to cooperate with an audit firm tasked with cleaning the voters' register.
Msando's murder came just days before the August 8, 2017 general elections which he had expressed confidence would not be rigged because the electronic voting system he had helped develop could not be hacked.
"Five years since you were handed to the brutal killers to thwart efforts of delivering a credible election in Kenya. Though your betrayers have been rewarded and electoral integrity remains in peril, JUSTICE will be served, no matter how long it takes," Akombe said on Msando's 5th anniversary.
Akombe silently fled the country to the US shortly after the disputed 2017 election results, claiming her life was in danger.
She claimed Msando was handed over to his killers by IEBC insiders. She has remained in exile since.
Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission chair Wafula Chebukati said then that the commission's top priority was to establish who killed Msando.
"In our mind as a commission, the only issue is who killed him and why, and that is the question that must be answered."
Msando's body bore the hallmarks of torture when his remains were found early morning half naked. He had deep scratches and cuts on his back and hand.
Autopsy results revealed that he had been tortured and strangled to death.
Reports indicated that one of his hands had been severed, pointing to a painful death.
But despite Chebukati's remarks about the need to find out who killed the IT expert, the murder remains unresolved as no one has been held accountable five years later.
Ironically, on the day Msando's remains were found, he was slated to oversee the public testing of the Kenya Integrated Electoral Management System (KIEMS).
A similar electronic system which was used in the 2013 election failed, leading to manual identification and transmission of votes.
Some, particularly in the opposition, claimed that this allowed for voter manipulation in the election whose results were eventually disputed in court by presidential candidate Raila Odinga.
Ironically, Raila, the Azimio la Umoja One Kenya presidential candidate in the 2022 elections is still at logger heads with the electoral agency over voter identification on polling day.
Whereas the commissioner has insisted that it will only use the KIEMS system to identify voters, Raila wants a manual voter register on standby as a complementary voter identification system in the event that the electronic system fails like it did in 2013.
IEBC bore to pressure and said it has printed the manual registers.
With just 11 days to the August 9 polls, it remains to be seen whether or not Msando's ghost will be appeased through the non-failure of the electronic system he helped develop with an assurance that it cannot be rigged.