Kenya election,Jubelee candidate Uhuru Kenyatta has maintained his lead in the official presidential vote tallying,

Uhuru Kenyatta has maintained his lead in the official presidential vote tallying, after opening a lead of over 535,413 votes against his closest challenger, Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD) presidential candidate, Raila Odinga.

As at 9am on Thursday, Kenyatta maintained the lead with 2,416,321 votes against Odinga’s 1,880,908 votes, as the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission continued releasing the official presidential vote tally.

The Jubilee leader held onto the lead with 76 out of 291 constituencies having been announced by IEBC at the National Tallying Centre at the Bomas of Kenya.

By early on Thursday morning, 215 returning officers had arrived at Bomas to file their returns for the presidential vote.

IEBC said that the remaining few were due any time, with the results which they said would ensure the final presidential results were out by Friday.

Commission Chairman Issack Hassan had on Tuesday directed all Returning Officers to present themselves at the National Tallying Centre to present official results for presidential, gubernatorial, senatorial, MPs, women and county assembly representatives.

Hassan had initially said that the results would be relayed 48 hours after Monday’s vote but following several hitches, the commission has kept postponing the release. IEBC said it is allowed by law up to seven days after the close of polling, meaning next Monday, to announce the results.

Orange Democratic Movement Secretary General Anyang’ Nyong’o meanwhile has called on the IEBC to urgently remedy logistical difficulties affecting the vote count so that results can be released at the earliest.

Nyong’o at the same time encouraged patience amongst Kenyans.

“We call upon Kenyans to have confidence in us and we shall do our best to solve the different problems we are having with the release of the results,” Nyong’o stated.