Venaani campaign manager gets job at ECN

McHENRY Venaani’s campaign manager, Hella Nghifindaka, is doubling up as an Electoral Commission of Namibia coordinator in the information technology department.

Nghifindaka, who handles Venaani’s image as well as administers his social network accounts through her company Hella Investments, will also be in charge of monitoring election results next month.

ICT project coordinator at the electoral commission Milton Louw acknowledged yesterday that they were in the process of recruiting Nghifindaka, and that her employment contract is yet to be signed.

“We are in the process of appointing two contract workers who will specialise in the voter registration system and central election results. Nghifindaka is one of them,” said Louw.

ECN manager of operations Theo Mujoro said this presents a direct conflict of interest since the electoral body’s policies state that any of their employees may not actively promote the agenda of a contesting party.

“If what you are telling me is true, then it is a direct conflict of interest. I need to take immediate action,” he said.

Nghifindaka said her business relationship with Venaani ended a month ago when she informed him of her decision to work for the electoral body.

Despite the denial, The Namibian understands that Nghifindaka was still actively running Venaani’s social media campaign by yesterday.

On Friday last week, The Namibian hosted a question and answer session with Venaani on Twitter where people were allowed to ask him questions on national issues.

Nghifindaka admitted that she partly managed the #AskVenaani session on Twitter and Facebook, but said it was her last task for Venaani.

“We kept on postponing the session for months and when it finally took place last week, I had to step in and assist as part of my last assignment for Venaani,” she said.

Even though Nghifindaka said she is no longer working with Venaani, sources say she told her close friends that she wants to secretly remain Venaani’s image manager while getting other tenders on the sidelines.

Although she has been Venaani’s image consultant for the past few months, revelations about her new job have placed Nghifindaka in a situation of having to let go of her role as political campaigner.

Sources at ECN this week confirmed that Nghifindaka has been popping in at ECN to ‘assist’ with the voter registration system coordination in the IT department for the past few weeks.

She is also expected to be working with the Central Election Results once the elections are in full swing next month.

This is also in contradiction to sources who insisted Nghifindaka continued posting tweets on behalf of Venaani last Saturday and Sunday. Some Twitter users doubted whether it was indeed Venaani who was sending the tweets.

Nghifindaka was also accused of being deceptive last month after she suggested using her own account that Twitter users roast or make fun of Venaani, an action that would give the politician hype and thus gain some mileage.

She admitted that she was in the process of signing a contract with ECN but that there was a lot of ‘red-tape’ around it, adding that she will not necessarily be working for ECN but under ECN’s ICT project coordintor, Louw.

Nghifindaka has been the brains behind most of Venaani’s biggest political campaigns, including his recent visit to the Ombili settlement in Windhoek, where he spent three days in the slum, as well as according him a platform on The Namibian’s #Ask Venaani session.

Venaani told The Namibian yesterday that his contract with Nghifindaka was only for a short period and that he cut her loose last month.

“Part of that contract stipulated that she not work for an institution which is in direct conflict of interest with the DTA. When she informed me that she wanted to work for ECN, we decided to end our business relationship to prevent any conflict of interest,” he said.

Venaani also said that he has since found a new image consultant. Asked about the name of his new image consultant, Venaani said he does not remember the name clearly.

“She is Lorraine-something-something,” he said.

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