Building Bridges Initiative team confirmed chopping off a whopping 800,000 signatures before handing them over to the IEBC for verification.
The handing over which took place on Thursday December 10th evening saw only 4.4 million signs given to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission IEBC for approval.
Initially, the total signature collected was announced to have been 5.2 million in what some sections protested that they were forged.
And speaking on Thursday, BBI Secretariat Co-Chairman Dennis Waweru observed that they had to do internal auditing to first make sure they submit only a perfect job to the IEBC.
He explained that they did not want to take chances in a process that is as noble as preparing for a Referendum scheduled early next year.
Waweru further clarified that they noticed some signatures had obvious inconsistencies and errors which they had to clear first so that not to compromise the subsequent stages.
“We want to have clean data. The IEBC gave us a format and that is what we followed,” Waweru had explained.
Homenews site further learnt that the team also prepared a soft copy so that the process of verification is made a lot easier and fast.
Responding to the team, Electoral boss Wafula Chebukati made it clear that the verification exercise will only commence when they receive the necessary funding from the Treasury.
“We have received the sample signatures. We shall now proceed and request a budget from the National Treasury. As soon as we get a budget from the exchequer we shall now get our team, the referendum committee, to verify the signatures. Of course, we shall not commence until we get a budget,” he stated.
After the verification process is complete, this will set stage for the next step towards the Referendum.
