Shock as Senior IEBC Official is Murdered in Mombasa

A senior Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) official has been murdered in a shocking incident in Mombasa County.

The 48-year-old Aisha Akinyi Abubakar lost her life in a robbery incident after thugs broke into her home in Utange at 3am on Sunday, January 5.

The assailants are reported to have attacked her after breaking into her house through a kitchen window.

Police reports stated that two suspected robbers broke into Abubakar’s house in the wee hours and used a knife to attack her and 18-year-old Khasim Hassan.

Police have launched investigations into the incident that is reported to have also left her son with injuries. The son was rushed to a private hospital in Mombasa, where he is currently undergoing treatment.

With the authorities yet to release a substantive statement, the matter is expected to generate a lot of public debates, especially on the safety of electoral officials.

The incident occurs amid growing demands from Kenyans for the reconstitution of the electoral body, a process that has faced delays with less than three years remaining until the general elections.

The incident borders yet other similar cases where an election official was abducted in Embakasi East Constituency during the transition period after the 2022 general elections. The official was later discovered murdered.

In 2017, Chris Musando, a top information technology manager at IEBC, was murdered after being abducted in Nairobi. 

”There was no doubt he was tortured and murdered. The only question in our mind is who [killed him] and why he was killed a few days before the elections,” Wafula Chebukati, the then IEBC chairperson, told the media.