Reactions continue to trail the just concluded 2026 national officers’ election of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), with Monday Ubani, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), calling for a comprehensive review of the exercise which was characterised by controversies, including technical failures that reportedly prevented several eligible lawyers from voting.
Mr Ubani made the call in a statement posted on his Facebook page on Tuesday, while congratulating Oyinkansola Badejo-Okusanya, also a SAN, who was declared winner of the presidential election of the association.
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He said he and his son, who is also a lawyer, were unable to vote in an NBA election like many other lawyers despite making repeated attempts to participate.
According to him, the One-Time Password (OTP) required to complete the electronic voting did not arrive after several attempts.
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“After several unsuccessful attempts, the response on my device changed to the now-familiar refrain: “This site can’t be reached,” Sadly, that remained my experience until voting eventually came to an end,” he stated.
Mr Ubani, a former chairman of the Ikeja branch of the NBA in Lagos who later served a term as the second vice president of the association at the national level, explained that his son, who is also a lawyer and an eligible voter, experienced similar difficulties, while several colleagues and friends contacted him during the election to report comparable problems.
He noted that some voters switched from mobile devices to laptops after being advised that the latter might provide better access to the voting platform, but their difficulties persisted.
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“Against this background, it would be difficult to dismiss these complaints as isolated incidents or the frustrations of a few disgruntled voters.
“An electoral process that technically disenfranchises a significant number of eligible voters cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be described as wholly free, fair, credible and inclusive,” he lamented.
Mr Ubani stressed that the problems were particularly unfortunate because of the high level of interest generated by the election.
He said lawyers who were willing and eligible to vote should not have been prevented from doing so by failures in the electoral system.
“Whoever insists that there was no problem with the process, in the face of the widespread complaints experienced and reported by members, would simply not be presenting a fair account of what transpired,” he stated.
However, Mr Ubani said he was not out to diminish the victory secured by Mrs Badejo-Okusanya and other elected national officers that emerged from the poll. Despite his misgivings, he said Mrs Badejo-Okusanya and others could still have won.
While calling on Mrs Badejo-Okusanya’s upcoming leadership to reform the NBA’s electoral process, Mr Ubani said she and the other winners could still have won convincingly.
“Indeed, I believe Madam Badejo-Okusanya could still have won resoundingly even without the technical glitches that unfortunately cast a shadow over the process,” he wrote, but maintained that “issues arising from the election should not be ignored or swept under the carpet.”.
Mrs Badejo-Okusanya defeated fellow SANs Lateef Akangbe and Olumuyiwa Akinboro in the election held between Saturday and Sunday.
She polled 12,317 votes, while Mr Akangbe scored 7,934 votes and Mr Akinboro 5,855 votes, according to the final tally on the live results dashboard of the Electoral Committee of the NBA (ECNBA).
Her victory made her the first elected female president of the NBA and the second woman to lead the 66-year-old association, after Priscilla Kuye, who served as president between 1991 and 1992.
Billed to be inaugurated alongside other newly elected national officers during the NBA’s annual general conference scheduled for 21 to 28 August in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Mrs Badejo-Okusanya will take office as the association’s 33rd president and the first female to occupy the office through an election.
Learn from ex-President Yar’adua
Mr Ubani called on the upcoming Badejo-Okusanya-led executives to champion a reform of the association’s electoral process.
“The legitimacy of leadership is strengthened, not weakened, when legitimate questions surrounding the process that produced it are openly acknowledged and addressed,” he wrote, adding, “The starting point for the new NBA leadership should therefore be a candid interrogation of the electoral process through which it emerged.”
He urged the upcoming NBA leadership to draw useful lesson from Nigeria’s democratic history, citing the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s historic acknowlegement in 2007 that the electoral process that brought him into office was flawed and thereafter initiated electoral reforms.
“That acknowledgment did not diminish his office; rather, it demonstrated an important willingness to confront deficiencies in the system,” the senior lawyer said, urging “the incoming NBA leadership should demonstrate similar institutional courage.”
“Madam Oyin Badejo-Okusanya owes the NBA constituency a responsibility to acknowledge the genuine complaints arising from this election and to support a transparent review of what went wrong,” he wrote.
Questions to the answered
To guide future interrogation into the controversial election, Mr Ubani raised questions that he said required clear answers.
He asked among other questions, “Why did so many eligible voters reportedly experience difficulties receiving OTPs?”
“Why were members confronted with inaccessible platforms and error messages? What was the extent of voter disenfranchisement caused by these technical failures? Were adequate contingency measures in place? And, most importantly, what concrete reforms will ensure that these failures are never repeated?
“These questions should not be treated as partisan attacks against the winners. They are institutional questions that go directly to the integrity of the Nigerian Bar Association,” Mr Ubani wrote.
While noting that lawyers routinely demand credible elections, transparency and accountability from the Independent National Electoral Commission and other public institutions, he added that the NBA “cannot demand from others a standard that it is unwilling to apply rigorously to itself.”
“The Association must therefore undertake a comprehensive post-election audit and review of the 2026 electoral process,” the lawyer stated.
He also called on the incoming leadership to ensure that the findings for such an audit are “made available to members, identified technological and administrative failures should be addressed, and appropriate safeguards must be instituted well ahead of the next election.”
Election conducted amid controversy
The election was conducted amid controversy over the electronic voting system and other aspects of the electoral process.
Voting, which was scheduled to begin at midnight on Saturday, did not start until 7:35 a.m. The ECNBA attributed the delay to what it described as a “deliberate, coordinated and sustained cyberattack” on the voting platform.
The poll had also been preceded by legal and administrative disputes, including concerns over the composition of the ECNBA and the credibility of the voters’ register.
The Court of Appeal in Ibadan eventually cleared the way for the election after overturning an order of the Oyo State High Court restraining the ECNBA from conducting the poll.
The election recorded 26,184 votes across the 13 national officer positions, representing 31.86 per cent of the 82,172 registered voters.
The turnout was lower than the more than 40,000 votes recorded in the 2024 NBA election.
Mr Akangbe, who came second in the presidential race, rejected the process, describing it as “shambolic” and “a shame to the Bar”.
In an interview with ARISE NEWS, he said the problems experienced during the election went beyond low voter turnout.
“It’s not a case of low turnout. It was a case of disenfranchisement. I couldn’t vote myself. The other candidate couldn’t vote. I understand even the winner couldn’t vote, but nothing has been said about it,” he noted.
Mr Akangbe stated that the election had damaged the legal profession’s moral authority to criticise electoral failures by public institutions.
“We’ve become a laughingstock to entire Nigeria,” he stressed, arguing that lawyers would struggle to demand credible elections from the Independent National Electoral Commission and other institutions when the NBA itself had allegedly failed to conduct a c redible election.
He also questioned the legitimacy of the outcome, saying a flawed electoral process could not produce a legitimate result.
Mr Akangbe stated that he would have supported a fresh election if he had been in the position of the declared winner, arguing that a rerun could help restore confidence in the NBA presidency.
READ ALSO: Tinubu congratulates Badejo-Okusanya, first elected female NBA president
He noted that his concerns were not personal but centred on reforming the NBA’s electoral system.
“We’re not talking about personalities; we’re talking about the system. I’m only interested in the system. How do we fix the system?” he said.
The outgoing NBA President, Afam Osigwe, however, defended the process, saying the election survived a coordinated cyberattack that nearly disrupted the exercise.
According to Mr Osigwe, the ECNBA and its technical team migrated to a secure server after the voting platform was disrupted, allowing the election to continue.
He urged members to put the contest behind them and called on the new officers to be magnanimous in victory.
“This is a time for healing. At the end of the day, the Bar must be the ultimate winner,” he stated.
Mr Osigwe also said the ECNBA would conduct a comprehensive review of the election to examine the challenges encountered and strengthen the association’s future elections.
The election has received divided reactions from within and outside the association.
On Tuesday, President Bola Tinubu congratulated Mrs Badejo-Okusanya, describing her emergence as a watershed in the legal profession and a triumph for merit, excellence and gender inclusion.
President Tinubu urged her to reach out to the other contestants, unite the Bar and address the issues that arose during the election.
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