Oyinkansola Badejo-Okusanya, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) and the only female candidate in the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) presidential election, has maintained an early lead in the race.
When PREMIUM TIMES checked the live election results portal at 4:15 p.m. on Saturday, Mrs Badejo-Okusanya had polled 9,053 votes, representing 45.18 per cent of the ballots cast.
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Her closest challenger, Lateef Omoyemi Akangbe, also a SAN, had secured 6,253 votes (31.27 per cent), while Olumuyiwa Akinboro, also a SAN, polled 4,709 votes (23.54 per cent).
The live results portal also showed that 20,035 voters, representing 24.38 per cent of the 82,164 registered voters, had voted by about 4.14 p.m. on Saturday.
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The Electoral Committee of the Nigerian Bar Association (ECNBA) had yet to declare the final result as of the time of filing this report, as voting was still ongoing.
The early lead followed a series of controversies that overshadowed the election before voting commenced on Saturday.
The electronic voting is expected to last for 24 hours from the time of commencement.
Although scheduled to commence at 12 a.m. West African Time on Saturday, the voting did not begin until 7.35 a.m.
This now means voting must extend to 7:35 a.m. on Sunday after which the final result tally can be determined.
Voters are simultaneously voting for other candidates contesting other national offices in the ongoing election.
Other offices for which candidates are vying include the First Vice President, Second Vice President, Third Vice President, General Secretary, Assistant General Secretary, Welfare Secretary and Assistant Welfare Secretary.
Others are Treasurer, Publicity Secretary, Assistant Publicity Secretary as well as representatives of the Eastern Zone, WesternZone, and the Northern Zone.
Voting delay
According to the ECNBA, the delay was caused by a “deliberate, coordinated and sustained cyberattack” that the voting platform suffered from external actors seeking to disrupt the election.
The committee apologised to members and postponed the commencement of voting until 7:35 a.m. It said its cybersecurity team and the Election Voting Service Provider had activated security protocols to repel the attack, neutralise the threat and restore the platform.
It also maintained that no votes had been cast or accepted while the system remained offline and advised lawyers to await further instructions before attempting to access the voting portal.
The disruption prompted many lawyers, including one of the presidential candidates, Mr Akangbe, to demand the immediate suspension of the election.
In a protest letter to the ECNBA, Mr Akangbe described the situation as a “catastrophic structural and technical collapse” of the electoral process less than three hours after voting commenced.
He alleged that the voting portal had become inaccessible to most of the association’s more than 82,000 accredited voters, with users reporting authentication failures, error messages and repeated timeouts.
He also questioned reports that votes cast before the outage could be cancelled if the process restarted, arguing that such a development raised concerns about the integrity of the election.
Mr Akangbe further alleged that the ECNBA breached its revised electronic voting guidelines by sending one-time passwords (OTPs) through email instead of SMS, contrary to assurances given to members less than 24 hours before the election.
He argued that the change compromised the election’s authentication framework.
Mr Akangbe also alleged that the electronic ballot displayed the photograph of only one of the three cleared presidential candidates, while the photographs of the other two candidates, including his, were either omitted or failed to render.
He urged the ECNBA to suspend the election, preserve all electronic voting records, commission an independent forensic audit of the platform and postpone the poll until the identified concerns were resolved.
The controversy came two days after the NBA insisted the election would proceed as scheduled despite the detention of the managing director of its election service provider by the State Security Service (SSS).
The association’s National Executive Council condemned the detention, demanded the official’s immediate release and reaffirmed that there was no operational or logistical reason to postpone the election.
The NBA later confirmed that the official had been released before voting day.
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