NASA leader Raila Odinga yesterday led other opposition leaders in migrating to Airtel, following the alliance’s call for supporters to ditch Safaricom.
The opposition accuses Safaricom of supporting Jubilee in the bungling of the August 8 presidential election.
NASA denied its call was a witch hunt, saying their aim is to entrench electoral justice in the country by punishing perpetrators.
Raila arrived at an Airtel outlet along Koinange Street and bought a new line. He later drove off without speaking to the media.
NASA co-principal Musalia Mudavadi then came to the shop a few minutes after Raila left. he also bought a new Airtel line.
Hundreds of NASA supporters thronged the shop as the leaders got served.
Politicians allied to Jubilee have accused NASA of sabotaging the economy. They said the boycott action will result in job losses.
Mudavadi dismissed those claims. He said NASA was not responsible for any losses.
“If people migrate from one network to the another, they will still be creating jobs. Ours is about a broader cause. It is about electoral justice. Anybody who wants to do business in Kenya must never be involved in subverting the will of the people,” Mudavadi said.
“It is a very well-thought-out process, which requires careful consideration. We must also be able to justify to the public why we are doing it,” he added.
NASA said Safaricom played a huge role in the August 8 election. Its acts of omission or commission denied the opposition victory, NASA claims.
It accused Safaricom of transmitting results from the polling stations directly to a cloud server registered in Spain and not to the IEBC server in France, as was agreed in their contract. Safaricom has denied these claims.
NASA has listed Safaricom alongside Brookeside Dairies and Bidco Oil among companies it wants supporters to boycott their products.
Yesterday, the Safaricom Dealers Association protested the boycott call. It said it has already had a “devastating effect” on business.
“I am not a supporter of any economic sabotage. I would advocate Kenyans and politicians to build new businesses and stop destroying what we have already built,” SDA chairperson Esther Muchemi said.
NASA had given supporters up to Friday to migrate from the Safaricom network.
