Crisis clouds NBA’s Saturday poll: Here’s what we know so far

As the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) prepares to elect its next set of national officers on Saturday, July 18, the process has been troubled by court battles, an unprecedented intervention from the office of the attorney-general of the federation, allegations of bias against the association’s leadership, and disputes over zoning arrangements.

This has turned what should have been a routine internal election into one of the most contested election processes in the NBA’s recent history.

With over 82,000 lawyers across 139 branches of the NBA eligible to vote, three senior advocates (SANs) running for the presidency, and legal challenges still pending hours before polls open, the outcome — whether it will be broadly accepted across the profession — remains genuinely uncertain.

HOW IT STARTED

The process for the 2026 election formally began at a national executive council meeting in Edo state on November 20, 2025, where a five-member Electoral Committee of the Nigerian Bar Association (ECNBA) was approved, chaired by Aham Ejelam, SAN, with Ibrahim Aliyu Nassarawa as secretary.

Section 10(1) of the NBA’s 2015 Constitution (amended 2025) establishes the ECNBA as an independent body that runs elections for the association’s national offices and for NBA representatives on the General Council of the Bar.

The presidential position for this election cycle is zoned to the NBA’s Western.

By June 18, the ECNBA had cleared 35 candidates to contest the various national offices, with three senior advocates emerging as presidential contenders: Olumuyiwa Akinboro of the Abuja branch, Oyinkansola Badejo-Okusanya (the only woman among recent presidential candidates) of the Lagos branch and Lateef Akangbe, also of Lagos.

COURT CASES/ZONING TENSIONS 

Trouble surfaced early. On March 4, Gabriel Opayinka, judge of the Oyo state high court, granted an interim order restraining the NBA from taking further steps toward the election, and barring Afam Osigwe, NBA president, from constituting or supervising the ECNBA. The order came following a suit filed by four lawyers — Ibrahim Lawal, Raymond Oki, Omotan Olusola Ogunmodede and Chief Gabriel Ojo Adekunle Ijalana — challenging the legitimacy of the process. In the suit, the applicants contested the legitimacy of the electoral process and the role allegedly played by the NBA leadership in the composition of the ECNBA.

Also, Egbe Amofin O’odua, an association of lawyers of Yoruba extraction, has been pushing for Akinboro to be adopted as the sole western-zone candidate, arguing that he is the zone’s consensus choice.

To get the NBA to yield, the group filed a suit marked I/205/2026 before the Oyo state high court.

On February 24, Y. S. Adekunle, the presiding judge, granted an interim injunction barring the NBA from recognising or processing nominations outside the Yoruba lawyers’ consensus candidate arrangement for the presidency.

CALLS FOR OSIGWE’S RESIGNATION

Weeks before the courts got involved, the dispute had already turned personal. At an NEC meeting in Maiduguri, Borno state, on February 5, Akinboro and Akangbe, candidates vying for the presidential office, accused Osigwe of bias. They alleged that the NBA president, while responding to concerns raised over campaign materials being distributed at the venue, declared he could not remain neutral in the election because he holds voting rights as a member. In a letter dated February 15 to the NBA board of trustees, the two candidates cited that remark, along with what they called a pattern of partisan conduct, as grounds to demand Osigwe’s immediate resignation.

Separately, Muritala Abdul-Rasheed, a former NBA publicity secretary, also called on Osigwe to resign, pointing to alleged ethical breaches, including non-disclosure of a N300 million payment from the Rivers state government linked to the NBA’s annual general conference, alongside the neutrality remarks. Osigwe has denied the allegations against him.

AGF’S ‘INTERVENTION’

The dispute heightened after Lateef Fagbemi, attorney-general of the federation (AGF), allegedly issued a directive that the election be pushed from July into August. A document said to contain a sub-committee report and comments attributed to Fagbemi, which circulated online, reportedly went further by calling for the ECNBA to be disbanded, its election technology vendor replaced, a caretaker committee installed, NIN verification introduced, and even the NBA constitution altered to curtail universal suffrage.

However, Osigwe rejected the intervention outright. In a statement, he argued that only the NBA’s national executive council has constitutional power to alter or suspend the election, and described the alleged directives as unconstitutional and beyond the AGF’s authority

The NBA also defended its election vendor and said its own risk assessment had found that introducing NIN verification at this stage could disrupt the vote, partly because the national identity database might not handle the surge in authentication requests.

As tensions built, a document falsely claiming the election had been suspended began circulating and had to be publicly debunked by the ECNBA, which said it had no connection to the AGF’s office.

APPEAL COURT CLEARS WAY

On July 14, the court of appeal, Ibadan division, set aside Opayinka’s interim order, which restrained the association from taking further steps towards the election.

In a unanimous judgement, a three-member panel of the appellate court held that the Oyo state high court never had jurisdiction to hear it in the first place. The appellate court held that jurisdiction is foundational to any judicial proceeding and that everything built on a jurisdiction-less order, including the injunction that had restrained the ECNBA and Osigwe, was void. The appeal had been brought by ECNBA chairman Aham Ejelam and other committee members against the four lawyers who filed the original suit, as well as against Osigwe and others.

WHERE THINGS STAND

With voting just one day away, the ECNBA has confirmed a final register of 82,213 eligible voters across 139 branches, published on July 10. The committee has repeatedly said the July 18 date is fixed and that there is no legal barrier to proceeding and said election observers, including the Department of State Services (DSS), the Nigeria Police Force, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), are expected to monitor the process from a central control room at the NBA’s Abuja secretariat.

Voting is due to run electronically from midnight to 11:59 p.m. on Saturday, with results expected Sunday.
(TheCable)