BBI Referendum to be Held in Early April 2021, Raila Says

ODM leader Raila Odinga projects the country will head to a referendum in early April 2021 if everything goes well.

Speaking during an interview with TV47, Raila said the process is moving on smoothly and urged the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) to speed up the verification of signatures.

Odinga asserted that the commission should be able to validate the 4.4 million signatures endorsing the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) process within two weeks.

He indicated that IEBC has enough resources and manpower to complete the task by January 10th, especially now that the Treasury approved and released a Sh93.7 million budget for the exercise.

“When IEBC was verifying Punguza Mizigo Initiative signatures, they did not hire a single clerk. Now they have money, the process should take only two weeks,” said Odinga.

Last week, IEBC invited online applications for signature verification clerks to arrive not later than December 24th, 2020.

The commission is seeking to hire 400 clerks on a temporary basis to verify the BBI signatures.