Speaking in Dhusamareb, Mohamud said those diverting public funds are “thieves” and do not deserve sympathy from their clans, warning against attempts to defend them from arrest.

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His first comments on the result came shortly after four of the seven election commissioners said they stood by their decision a day earlier to disown the outcome of the presidential poll, saying the final tallying process had been “opaque”.

“Our view is that the figures announced by (electoral commission chairman Wafula) Chebukati are null and void and must be quashed by court of law,” Odinga, who was making his fifth bid for the presidency, told a news conference.

“What we saw yesterday was a travesty,” he said. “Let no one take the law into their own hands.”

Chebukati declared current deputy president William Ruto the winner on Monday with 50.49% of the vote against Odinga’s 48.5%. Minutes earlier, his deputy Juliana Cherera had told media at a separate location that she and three other commissioners disowned the results.

Speaking for the group on Tuesday, Cherera said the results that gave Ruto a wafer-thin victory were erroneously aggregated and accused Chebukati of over-ruling their questions on the final tally. She said the elections had been conducted in a proper manner.

Chebukati and the four dissenting commissioners did not respond to Reuters requests for comment.

Odinga broadcast the dissenting commission members’ own news conference at his own venue before taking the stage.

In his speech, he urged his supporters to maintain peace and not to take the law into their own hands.

Monday’s dramatic events have raised fears of violence like that seen after past elections in Kenya, usually one of Africa’s most stable countries, and Odinga had faced calls from home and abroad to commit to resolving any disputes in the courts.

In 2017, more than 100 people were killed after the Supreme Court overturned the result citing anomalies in the voting process. A decade earlier, more than 1,200 people were killed in widespread violence after the 2007 presidential vote.

At a crowded restaurant in the western city of Kisumu, an Odinga stronghold, there was sporadic applause as he rejected yesterday’s results on live television.

In Kisumu and Nairobi’s huge Kibera slum, where most voters also strongly favour Odinga, quiet had returned to the streets after protesters battled police and burned tyres overnight.

Reporting by Duncan Miriri, George Obulutsa and David Lewis in Nairobi, Ayenat Mersie and Kevine Omollo in Kisumu Writing by James Macharia Chege Editing by Catherine Evans

Former deputy chief of the Somali spy agency, Abdisalan Guled, said the government and intelligence agency’s silence about the woman’s disappearance sparks suspicion and backs speculations that she might be “missing at the hand of the intelligence agency, whether alive or dead”.

The young woman, identified by local media as Ikran Tahlil Farah, disappeared on June 26 as Horn of Africa country marked its independence and a vehicle belonging to the national intelligence agency picked her from her home after midnight in one of the most surveilled areas of the capital, Mogadishu.

“If she was a member of the people keeping hold of documents [of youths sent to Eritrea], there emerges a reason that the government is trying to erase those traces and enforce disappearance of anyone involved,” former deputy spy chief Abdisalan Guled said.

Former head of the Somali spy agency Abdullahi Mohamed Sanbalolshe said the young woman joined the government institution during his tenure in office in 2017 and has since been an active employee at the headquarters of NISA.

He added that the government “should tell about the whereabouts of the missing woman whether alive or dead” and that there is growing suspicion that the intelligence agency is behind the young woman’s disappearance.

“There is a possibility that she is a victim because of being in the loop of sensitive information… she was keeping hold of the database of troops sent to train in Eritrea,” ex-boss of Somalia’s National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) Abdullahi Mohamed Sanbalolshe said in an interview with VOA Somali.

There is fear that the young woman was killed the same night she was kidnapped and the government has not immediately commented on growing calls for information over her whereabouts.

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Just less than two months following the deal, two rival teams of an election committee appointed to the manage the selection of MPs from Somaliland chose two leaders, triggering fear over parallel elections.

The two teams, one loyal to the deputy prime minister Mahdi Guled – a close ally of the current acting president Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo and the other linked to the Senate leader Abdi Hashi Abdullahi, blamed each other for the widening rift.

Abdi Hashi Abdullahi’s allies say the team picked by the deputy prime minister was stacked with state employees and called for their removal, despite the other party’s insistence on moving ahead with the task to which they had been assigned.

Elsewhere in the country, tensions have also been simmering in Gedo region over the way an upcoming vote would be conducted in the town of Garbaharey, an epicenter of long-running dispute between Somalia’s outgoing president and Jubaland leader.

Farmajo and his intelligence chief have been accused of airlifting a group of traditional leaders aligned with them to the town and detaining local elders to ensure that the vote results in their favor, though the federal government in Mogadishu has not immediately commented on the allegations.

The prime minister Mohamed Hussein Roble, who had been assigned to lead the strife-torn country to elections, cut short a visit to the town on Sunday, due to unrevealed circumstances but there were reports that had chosen to leave due to mounting tensions in the town. Roble has also been facing pressure from Farmajo and the national intelligence chief.

Deputy head of the Somali spy agency is visiting the town and is coordinating efforts to form a new administration for Garbaharey. Candidates running for the position of the district’s commissioner had been barred from attending flights heading to Garbaharey, a former MP said on Saturday, who also accused Farmajo and his intelligence chief of undermining the premier’s reconciliation efforts.

A tiff also remains over the selection of MPs from Puntland region. Somali minister of planning accused the region’s president last week that he had been “meddling” in the election process and used intimidation to influence the selection of new members of parliament from the region, a charge authorities in the semi-autonomous state later denied.

There has been a growing row over the upcoming parliamentary election in Hiran region and a regional cabinet meeting in the town of Baladwayne sparked deadly gunfight last week.

Just weeks after the prime minister said he was committed to free and fair polls, tensions have renewed and a stalemate over the upcoming polls seems to be still dragging on, receding hopes that the upcoming presidential vote will be held on its new date.

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Former Somali MP Abdullahi Abdulle Magan (Bood) told a press conference in the capital Mogadishu that the spy chief arrested traditional leaders and is carrying out a campaign aimed at “hijacking” the process in which 17 MPs from the region are designed to be chosen.

Candidates who were running for the position of district commissioner of Garbaharey, one of two election constituencies in Jubaland regional state, had been barred from attending flights from Adan Adde airport in the capital Mogadishu on Saturday, he added.

Garbaharey has been at the epicenter of a long-running dispute between Jubaland authorities and the government of Somali president Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo, though the country’s leaders announced in May that the stalemate would be brought to an end.

Three planes carrying pro-government traditional leaders, who had stayed at a five-star hotel in the capital, landed at an airstrip in Garbaharey on Saturday.

Deputy chief of the Somali national intelligence agency Abdullahi Kulane has been in the town over the past days, in what critics of president Farmajo say is part of efforts aimed to derail the electoral process and ensure that his allies win federal parliament seats allocated for Gedo region.

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One of the teams is loyal to the deputy prime minister Mahdi Mohamed Guled, a close ally of the current acting president Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo and went ahead with the election of a chairman without the presence of a group, which had earlier been picked by the speaker of the Upper House of Parliament Abdi Hashi Abdullahi.

Hours after Guled’s loyalists elected a leader, members of the Somaliland election committee picked by the Senate leader also announced it had chosen a chairman, who will facilitate the selection of MPs from the northern region, in what analysts say could lead to parallel electoral processes.

It comes as dispute over the upcoming elections has renewed over the past days, weeks after the prime minister and regional state leaders agreed to hold free and fair presidential vote.

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The team was denied access to information about thousands of youths sent to train in Eritrea by the president’s office and the spy agency. There were reports that Asmara also declined a request by the committee to visit camps where some of the youths are being held after completing training.

Eritrea is holding thousands of Somali youths in what families described as “slavery conditions” due to unpaid funds for their training. Qatar, which had previously pledged to pay cash for the training, later refused to deliver on its promises, according to Caasimada Online website.

Members of the committee, who are still in Mogadishu have not yet met with parents, officials and institutions where the information regarding the whereabouts of the missing recruits might have been obtained. Some officials within the team were called for secret meetings at president Farmajo and spy chief’s offices.

Somalia’s opposition and parents of missing youths earlier rejected the prime minister’s move to appoint the team, comprising ministers involved in the recruitment of the youths and called for assigning an independent committee to establish an investigation into the matter.

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