Kenyan education secretary Professor Jacob Kaimenyi is under pressure to quit his job following the fallout of a controversial school laptop tender.

This week Kenya’s Public Procurement Administrative Review Board (PPARB) revoked a laptop tender that had been awarded to Indian firm Olive Telecommunications after PC-maker Hewlett Packard (HP) and Haier Group queried the procurement decision. Olive was initially awarded a contract to supply 1.3 million laptops at Ksh 24.5 billion.

Reasons for the cancellation of the contract; though, have included that Olive Telecommunications did not meet the requirement of being an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) in Kenya and also that the Kenya’s education ministry over-inflated the laptop tender price. Olive also reportedly failed to meet a requirement that it has turnover of at least Ksh 8 billion per year.

Members of Kenya’s parliament have asked for Kaimenyi to resign, but he has shifted blame for the laptop procurment blunder onto members of the tender committee.

Kaimenyi told a media briefing in Kenya on Thursday that if an internal investigation finds that the committee provided ill-advice on the contract, then those members are planned to be sacked.

“I don’t see justification in someone asking for my resignation; however if anyone has evidence that I benefited from the tendering I am prepared to be taken to court,” Kaimenyi told reporters.

“I don’t sit in the tendering committee and we relied on the information provided by the ministerial tendering committee members who are the experts,” he said.

Meanwhile, Kenya’s education, science and technology parliamentary committee has said it is preparing a motion to censure the minister for withholding information on the procurement.