With the temperatures hitting as low as 15 degrees on Tuesday morning in Nyeri town and its environs, Nyeri residents braved the chilly foggy weather to turn out as early as 5:30 am in the morning to join the voting queues.
Vuvuzelas, which acted as a wake-up call, could be heard as early as 4 am in the Skuta area nudging voters to wake up early and cast their vote. At the Nyeri town Health Centre Polling Station, the queue had stretched past the main gate towards Kenyatta way.
According to the Nyeri County Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) Elections Coordinator, Annastacia Mutua, the voting exercise in the county kicked off at 6am on Tuesday in all the 965 polling stations without a hitch. She however noted that some agents affiliated to the different political parties experienced challenges with being admitted to the polling stations due to the discrepancies in the agent list submitted to the polling agency.
“Some of the agents who had presented themselves were not the ones who had been submitted to IEBC but we were able to resolve the problem immediately,” said Mutua.
The county has a total of 481,632 registered voters distributed across the six constituencies. Kieni, which is the largest constituency has 114,573 voters followed by Mathira constituency which has 104,492 voters while Nyeri Town has 87,168 registered voters. Othaya constituency has 61,879 registered voters, Mukurwe-ini has 58,534 while Tetu has 54,986 registered voters.
Mutua also said that the county did not encounter any mix-up in ballot papers or incidents where candidates were missing in the ballot papers.
By Wangari Mwangi and Samuel Maina
