Akangbe, Akinboro challenge NBA election results, seek probe

Two candidates in the just-concluded 2026 Nigerian Bar Association presidential election, Mr Lateef Akangbe (SAN) and Aare Olumuyiwa Akinboro (SAN), have separately challenged the outcome of the poll, alleging widespread constitutional, procedural and technological irregularities.

While Akangbe petitioned the NBA National Officers Election Appeal Committee, seeking to nullify the election, Akinboro called for an independent forensic audit of the exercise, insisting that the poll was fundamentally flawed and unknown to the NBA Constitution.

The Electoral Committee of the NBA had declared Mrs Oyinkansola Badejo-Okunsanya (SAN) winner of the July 18-19, 2026, election after polling 12,317 votes, representing 47.18 per cent of the total votes cast. Akangbe secured 7,934 votes, while Akinboro polled 5,855 votes.

In his petition before the Election Appeal Committee, Akangbe argued that the election failed to comply with the NBA Constitution and the guidelines governing the conduct of the 2026 national officers’ election.

He alleged that the electronic voting platform suffered a major malfunction about two hours after voting commenced, rendering the website inaccessible for more than seven hours and preventing thousands of eligible lawyers from casting their votes.

According to him, the Electoral Committee later migrated voting to another website that had neither been approved by the National Executive Committee nor subjected to independent verification by the candidates’ information technology representatives.

Akangbe further alleged that despite an agreement allowing each candidate to nominate an IT expert to monitor the electronic voting process, his representative was denied access to the backend of the voting platform, preventing independent verification of how votes were recorded and allocated.

He also claimed that widespread failures in the delivery of One-Time Passwords required for voter authentication disenfranchised thousands of eligible lawyers, including himself.

According to the petition, although the NBA published a register containing 82,213 eligible voters before the election, only 26,106 members eventually voted, leaving over 56,000 lawyers unable to participate.

Akangbe maintained that more than 25,000 lawyers willing to vote for him never received the authentication codes despite the Electoral Committee acknowledging delays in OTP delivery during the election.

He further faulted the extension of voting beyond the advertised deadline of 11:59pm on July 18, arguing that an electronic voting platform ought to have been programmed to terminate automatically at the stipulated time.

Among the reliefs sought, Akangbe asked the Appeal Committee to compel the Electoral Committee to produce a redacted audit report of the election, the voters’ register, final result sheets, server and application logs, network traffic records, database records, authentication logs, voting timestamps, system error logs, OTP delivery records, incident reports, administrative access logs and other technical documents to enable scrutiny of the election.

Separately, Akinboro, in a 41-page petition dated July 27, 2026, posted on his X handle on Wednesday, called for an independent forensic audit of the election and urged several institutions to intervene.

The petition was addressed to the Chairman of the Body of Benchers, the General Council of the Bar, the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, the NBA President, past NBA presidents, the Electoral Committee of the NBA, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and the Department of State Services.

Akinboro alleged that the election was characterised by constitutional, procedural and technological breaches and maintained that the issues went beyond the outcome of the poll to the credibility of the association’s democratic process.

In the petition, he narrated events leading to the election, alleging that shortly after the 2024 NBA election, then President-elect Afam Osigwe (SAN) persuaded him to contest the 2026 presidency and later introduced him to former NBA President Augustine Alegeh (SAN), who proposed a micro-zoning arrangement between the South-West and Mid-West whenever the presidency was zoned to the Western Zone.

Akinboro claimed he declined to champion the arrangement because doing so as an aspirant could be perceived as self-serving, adding that after the discussions collapsed, both Alegeh and the NBA leadership became opposed to his candidature.

He also accused the NBA leadership of openly supporting Badejo-Okunsanya throughout the campaign by deploying the association’s official structures and platforms in her favour.

According to him, campaign materials were distributed for her during the 2025 Annual General Conference health walk in Enugu, the Friendship Centre was made available for her campaign while other candidates sourced their own venues, and she received preferential treatment during the conference’s “Unbarred Party.”

Akinboro further alleged that the NBA President openly declared at a National Executive Committee meeting in Maiduguri that he could not remain neutral in the election and later canvassed support for Badejo-Okunsanya during an NBA-SPIDEL programme.

He also alleged that the Women’s Forum, Young Lawyers Forum and other NBA structures were deployed to mobilise support for the eventual winner.

Like Akangbe, Akinboro challenged the integrity of the electronic voting process.

He argued that the migration of voting to another electronic platform without complying with constitutional requirements meant the exercise was no longer the election contemplated by the NBA constitution.

According to him, the new platform ought to have undergone fresh integrity tests and trial messages to eligible voters at least 21 days before the poll.

He, therefore, contended that the national officers of the Election Appeal Committee lacked jurisdiction because, in his view, there had been no constitutionally valid election from which an appeal could arise.

The senior advocate also renewed concerns he had raised before the election over the appointment of electronic voting service provider Mikrodigital Connect and data protection firm Thanelinc Nigeria Limited, questioning their competence, experience and suitability for managing the election.

He further alleged that although candidates and the Electoral Committee had agreed to adopt the National Identification Number for voter authentication, the committee abandoned the proposal and reverted to authentication through Supreme Court Numbers and One-Time Passwords, which he argued made the process vulnerable to manipulation because lawyers’ Supreme Court numbers are publicly accessible.