The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) has apologised over a toe-curling tweet that referred to the BBI as “Burning Bridges Initiative”.
BBI, a brainchild of President Uhuru Kenyatta and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga, is acronym for the Building Bridges Initiative.
IEBC said the tweet, posted Wednesday morning on its verified Twitter handle, does not reflect the position of the Commission or its staff.
The tweet, which was part of a thread, was hurriedly deleted, but not without the attention of Twitter users who took screenshots of the same.
The error elicited reactions from among users, some expressing their ire at the commission and accusing it of showing signs of not backing the BBI process.
In a statement shared on its social media pages on Wednesday afternoon, the commission termed the blunder as a typographical error which was made inadvertently.
“The error does NOT any in way reflect the position of the Commission or its staff, ” said IEBC.
“The Commission sincerely apologizes to all its stakeholders and the General Public.”
IEBC was notifying members of the public that the verification exercise of the recently submitted BBI signatures had kicked off.
“The 400 clerks who were recruited for the exercise have taken their oath of secrecy and will begin their training shortly, ” said IEBC.
The vacancies were advertised on December 19.
The National Treasury recently approved Sh93.7 million funding to the commission for the verification of the over four million signatures.
IEBC had sought Sh241 million from the exchequer to review the signatures submitted by the BBI Secretariat, a proposal that was criticized by Odinga.