Wafula Chebukati hires 26 law firms on taxpayers’ money for the Supreme Court case
3 min readWafula Chebukati hires 26 law firms on taxpayers’ money to represent the electoral body at the Supreme Court.
In a move that might result in the taxpayer footing hundreds of millions of shillings in legal fees, IEBC CEO Hussein Marjan informed the Supreme Court that the commission and its chairperson Wafula Chebukati would be represented by 26 law firms.
Of the 26 law firms the commission hired, 22 will defend the IEBC, which is the first respondent, and four will represent Mr. Chebukati, who is a respondent by virtue of serving as the presidential election’s returning officer.
In addition to defending the election process, the lawyers will also be defending Mr. Chebukati, who is the target of numerous claims, some of which are criminal in nature.
However, the figure could be higher if the commission also foots the bill for lawyers representing the other six commissioners.
The rift among commissioners will see each group appoint separate sets of lawyers to represent them in the petitions challenging the outcome of the August 9 presidential election.
The four dissenting commissioners had appointed their individual lawyers.
Juliana Cherera has appointed Apollo Mboya, Mr. Nyang’aya opted for Rachier & Amollo Advocates while Mr. Wanderi has appointed J.M. Njenga Advocates.
However, sources at IEBC said that the lawyers appointed by the three commissioners were not in the panel of IEBC pre-qualified lawyers, putting into question whether the commission will foot the bills.
However, Mr. Wanderi said that the commission should pay the legal fees.
“They should because we are staff of the commission and whatever we did was on behalf of the commission,” he said.
This is the first time the polls agency will be approaching the Supreme Court divided with each of the two groups with their own lawyers.
The appointment of 26 law firms to represent IEBC and its chairman could be the largest by the commission since 2013 when the first presidential election petition was filed at the Supreme Court under the 2010 Constitution.
The 2013 petition cost IEBC Sh385 million for 14 law firms.
One of the lawyers who represented IEBC in 2013, Ahmednassir Abdullahi, billed the commission of Sh40 million.
The commission has spent Sh2.6 billion in legal fees in the last four years, according to the national government budget implementation review reports from 2018 to 2021, with Sh859.3 million in the financial year 2017/2018 which coincides with the August 2017 election when the presidential election outcome was twice challenged.
The figure can only be expected to go up this year, more so driven by the number of law firms that will be billing the commission.
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