2026 NBA elections: Legal hurdles, consensus deal and matters arising

By Ikechukwu Nnochiri

ABUJA— The Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), the umbrella body for legal practitioners in the country, now stands at a crossroads amid internal wranglings threatening its forthcoming elections.

Section 10(1) of the NBA Constitution 2015 (as amended in 2025) establishes the Electoral Committee of the Nigerian Bar Association (ECNBA) as an independent body responsible for conducting elections into national offices of the association and for NBA representatives to the General Council of the Bar.

With about nine months remaining in his tenure, the incumbent President of the NBA, Mazi Afam Osigwe, SAN, activated the process for selecting the association’s next leadership.

At the National Executive Council (NEC) meeting held in Edo State on November 20, 2025, a five-member ECNBA was approved to conduct the 2026 elections.

While a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Mr. Aham Ejelam, was appointed as Chairman to superintend the ECNBA, Ibrahim Aliyu Nasarawa was approved to serve as Secretary.

The other members of the Committee are Muhammad M. Nuhu, Uju Okafor, and Ume Maduka.
The NBA President maintained that their selection reflected the association’s commitment to transparency, integrity, and professionalism in its electoral processes.

As part of its preparations for the elections, the Ejelam-led ECNBA has already released a comprehensive list of aspirants who have submitted their letters of expression of interest to contest in the 2026 NBA elections, covering both national officers and representatives to the General Council of the Bar.

The Committee had in a notice dated March 2, 2026, clarified that the submission of letters of interest did not amount to formal nomination, emphasising that nomination remains a separate process in accordance with both the constitution of the association and relevant guidelines already issued.

So far, three senior lawyers have expressed intentions to vie for the NBA Presidency.

As acknowledged by the ECNBA, the presidential aspirants are: Aare Olumuyiwa Akinboro, SAN, who is of the Abuja Branch and was called to the Bar in 1991; Ms. Oyinkansola Badejo-Okunsanya, SAN, (Lagos Branch, 2002) who is the only female candidate in recent times; as well as Mr. Lateef Omoyemi Akangbe, SAN (Lagos Branch, 2003).

Constitutionally, the presidency is zoned to the Western axis for the 2026 elections.

Lagos, Ondo, Oyo, Osun, Ogun, Ekiti, Edo, and Delta states constitute the Western Zone of the NBA.
The NBA Constitution establishes a universal suffrage system conducted through electronic voting, with the electorate comprising lawyers who have paid their practising fees and branch dues.

Remarkably, while the association introduced power rotation to address instability, hegemony, marginalisation, and domination by one segment or region over others, that same zoning arrangement—intended to promote fairness in NBA leadership allocation and foster political stability—has now become a stumbling block to the ongoing electoral process.

Recently, an Oyo State High Court sitting in Ibadan issued an interim injunction halting all steps toward conducting the 2026 NBA elections.

Justice G. A. Opayinka granted the order on an ex parte application by four aggrieved lawyers.

The applicants seek to restrain the NBA leadership and ECNBA members from parading themselves as officials or taking any further action toward the election, pending the hearing of their motion on notice for an interlocutory injunction.

The suit marked I/221/2026 was filed by Ibrahim Lawal, Raymond Oki, Omotan Olusola Ogunmodede, and Chief Gabriel Ojo Adekunle Ijalana.

The defendants include NBA President Osigwe, SAN; the Incorporated Trustees of the NBA; the Body of Benchers; the Attorney-General of the Federation (as Chairman of the General Council of the Bar); and several senior lawyers.

Justice Opayinka’s order restrained the NBA President and other defendants from constituting, supervising, or interfering in any way with the ECNBA or the election process.

Likewise, on February 24, 2026, another judge of the same High Court, Justice Y. S. Adekunle, granted an interim injunction barring the NBA from recognising or processing nominations outside the Yoruba lawyers’ consensus candidate arrangement for the presidency.

That suit, marked I/205/2026, was filed by the Incorporated Trustees of Egbe Amofin O’odua.
Specifically, Egbe Amofin O’odua which is an association of lawyers of Yoruba extraction, is pushing for the NBA to adopt one of the presidential aspirants, Aare Akinboro, SAN, as the sole candidate for the election, having declared him its consensus candidate for the Western Zone—whose turn it is to produce the next NBA President.

Despite the Yoruba regional power bloc’s push to back Akinboro, SAN, as its consensus candidate, the other two aspirants, Badejo-Okunsanya, SAN, and Akangbe, SAN, insisted on pursuing their presidential ambitions.

In the first case (FHC/ABJ/CS/221/2026), the court granted two significant restraining orders.
Aside from tying the hands of the Ejelam-led ECNBA, the NBA President was further barred from constituting any Electoral Committee for the conduct of the election.

With the suit—seeking to recognise Akinboro, SAN, as the sole candidate—adjourned until April 15, the entire process already put in motion by the ECNBA appears to hang in the balance.

The legal action came after both Akinboro and Akangbe wrote a formal letter to the Board of Trustees of the NBA, demanding the immediate resignation of President Osigwe over what they described as an open admission of bias and persistent partisan conduct.

The letter, dated February 15, was addressed to the Chairman of the NBA BoT and copied to the Chairman of the Body of Benchers, the NBA President himself, all past presidents of the Association, and all members of the NEC.

The two aspirants anchored their demands on a statement they said the incumbent NBA President, Osigwe, SAN, made at the NEC meeting of the Association, held in Maiduguri, Borno State, on February 5.
According to them, Osigwe, SAN, had responded to concerns raised by another senior lawyer, Mr. Adetunji Osho, SAN, regarding the open distribution of campaign materials at the NEC meeting by declaring that he “cannot be neutral” because he has a voting right.

They said he went on to defend his right to support any candidate of his choice and sought to justify his position by analogy to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu appointing an INEC Chairman while intending to contest the 2027 presidential election.

Therefore, the duo implored the BoT to intervene urgently and decisively, while making four specific demands.

They demanded that Osigwe, SAN, resign immediately as NBA President, insisting that—having openly declared he could not remain neutral and engaged in sustained partisan conduct—he had forfeited the moral authority to continue in office during an election season.

The petitioners also called for the immediate reconstitution of the ECNBA, with clear safeguards to guarantee independence, transparency, and neutrality.

In addition, the two candidates demanded the establishment of an independent election oversight mechanism, free from the influence of the NBA President or any partisan interests.

Finally, they urged BoT members to ensure that the impending elections are conducted under conditions guaranteeing credibility, transparency, and fairness.

Carpeting Osigwe’s allusion to President Tinubu’s powers to appoint the INEC Chairman, the petitioners argued:

“The NBA President is not a distant appointing authority. He is the head of the Association under whose watch the ECNBA is constituted and under whose leadership the electoral process is conducted. The proximity, influence, and institutional control he wields are direct and substantial.”

“No one disputes his right to vote. The issue is institutional neutrality. He cannot be both partisan advocate and overseer of the electoral environment.

“The NBA cannot credibly demand fairness and justice in society while tolerating conduct that undermines fairness within its own ranks,” the letter concluded.

These developments have continued to polarise the Bar, with various groups pitching their tents where their interest lies.

The Egbe Amofin O’odua based its decision to throw its weight behind Akinboro, SAN, on a resolution the organisation reached in 2019.

The group said it resolved to give preference to the Oyo/Osun axis for the 2026 NBA presidency, particularly Osun State, which has never produced an NBA President.

Its special committee, led by its Vice-Chairperson, Mrs. Toyin Bashorun, SAN, said it assessed all aspirants from the South-West who had declared interest in the NBA presidency.

The intervention of Egbe Amofin O’odua led to the withdrawal of another female aspirant, Prof. Foluke Dada-Lawanson, from the presidential race.

Meanwhile, another group of legal practitioners under the aegis of Young Lawyers for Democracy has rejected the position of Egbe Amofin O’odua, even as it sought the withdrawal of the suit seeking to compel the NBA to recognise only Akinboro, SAN, for the office of President in the forthcoming elections.
The group, in a statement signed by its Director-General, Isa Tochukwu, described Egbe Amofin O’odua’s push as “deeply troubling” and called on Akinboro, SAN, to immediately and publicly dissociate himself from the action.

It decried that at a time the legal profession should be strengthening democratic participation within its own ranks, it is being dragged to court by a regional association that is not recognised by the NBA’s Constitution.

“Such a move strikes at the very heart of the democratic culture that the Bar has painstakingly built over the years.

“The Nigerian Bar Association belongs to all lawyers. It is not the property of any caucus, ethnic bloc, or political tendency.

“Its leadership must emerge from a process that gives every qualified candidate the opportunity to contest and every eligible lawyer the opportunity to vote,” the group contended.

Besides, the Young Lawyers for Democracy described the attempt by Egbe Amofin to restrict the process through litigation as not merely unfortunate but a direct challenge to the democratic foundation of the NBA.

“To approach the court seeking an order that would compel the NBA to recognise only the candidate presented by Egbe Amofin is, in effect, to ask the court to replace the will of thousands of lawyers with the preference of a single group. That is not democracy. It is an attempt at imposition.

“For many years, the process of choosing leaders was dominated by small circles of influence and closed-door arrangements. That culture was decisively broken during the administration of Augustine Alegeh, SAN, when universal suffrage was introduced into the NBA electoral system.

“That reform transformed the Bar. It shifted the power to determine leadership away from caucuses and placed it squarely in the hands of members of the association. For the first time, young lawyers across the country could participate meaningfully in choosing the leaders of their profession.”It is this democratic gain that the present lawsuit now threatens to undermine,” the statement from the group read.

The Young Lawyers urged Akinboro, SAN—who is positioned to benefit from the pending litigation—to publicly distance himself from the suit by Egbe Amofin O’odua.

“Leadership that seeks legitimacy must be willing to face the test of open competition. A candidate who believes in his capacity to lead the Bar should welcome the opportunity to present himself before the electorate of lawyers, not rely on court orders that attempt to eliminate competitors before the race even begins.

“For that reason, we make our position clear: unless Aare Muyiwa Akinboro, SAN, openly condemns and distances himself from this lawsuit, young lawyers across the country will find it difficult to support him or any candidate associated with efforts to undermine the voting rights of members of the Bar.

“As a matter of fact, we will not hesitate to mobilise young lawyers across the federation to massively vote against him, even if that is the only thing we can do to safeguard our right to choose leaders in the profession.

“Our votes matter, and our right to choose our leaders cannot be negotiated away in a courtroom.
“The NBA must remain a place where leadership is earned through ideas, integrity, and the confidence of members, not through litigation designed to shrink the democratic space.

“Universal suffrage in the NBA was hard won. We will not stand by while anyone attempts to roll it back.
“We will defend our vote. And we will defend our right to choose our leaders,” the group further stated.
As the clock ticks toward the twilight of the two-year term of the Osigwe-led NBA leadership, one thing remains clear: the association is walking a tightrope to the ballot.

The post 2026 NBA elections: Legal hurdles, consensus deal and matters arising appeared first on Vanguard News.