Why the NBA physician must first heal herself, by Rotimi Fasan

With the emergence of Oyinkansola Badejo-Okusanya (SAN) as the 33rd president of the Nigerian Bar Association, the controversies that had preceded this year’s election would seem to have subsided despite fears that the post-election period might be mired in litigation. Such fears have so far proven only partially founded, as some lawyers have allegedly headed for the courts while the losers in the presidential contest, Lateef Omoyemi Akangba (SAN) and Olumuyiwa Akinboro (SAN), seem to be taking the outcome of the election in their strides.

The newly elected president has extended her hand of friendship to the two other contestants. Mrs. Badejo-Okusanya will not be the first woman to occupy the office of the president when the transition period ends and Mazi Afam Osigwe formally hands over to her. That distinction belongs to Dame Priscilla Kuye, who became president to complete the second of the two-year term of Mr. Clement Akpamgbo (SAN), who had left the NBA presidency after a year to assume office as the Attorney-General of the Federation under the military regime of General Ibrahim Babangida.

But Oyinkansola Badejo-Okusanya is the first female to occupy the office of NBA president by election, and while she appears to have been a very popular candidate, her victory, or the processes that made it possible, have thrown up questions that speak to issues well beyond her immediate constituency as a legal practitioner. It has highlighted the fault lines that have undermined the authority of the NBA as a moral arbiter and a supposedly impartial advocate within the larger context of Nigerian politics. It was just over a year ago, precisely in April 2025, that the NBA was caught in the controversy of a N300 million largess the Rivers State government gave the association for the ‘hosting rights’ of the NBA conference that was to be held in the state. The NBA decided to relocate its conference to Enugu and denied Rivers the hosting right following the declaration of emergency rule in the state.

The NBA, whose motto is to champion ‘the rule of law,’ was disgusted by what it viewed as President Bola Tinubu’s despotic overreach and threw its weight behind the suspended governor, Siminalayi Fubara. But the state government under Vice Admiral Ibok-Ete Ibas, the Sole Administrator, demanded that the NBA return its N300 million. Like the chichidodo bird that despises maggot but feeds on excreta, the NBA made a great show of its displeasure with Abuja for its supposed disregard of the rule of law but firmly held on to the N300 million conference support fund. The NBA called the money a grant, but it could not tell anyone what it was for. When INEC deregistered the ADC in April this year (a decision that has been upheld by the Appeal Court), the outgoing NBA president, Afam Osigwe, came out shooting from the hip as he took the judiciary, particularly judges, to task for their perceived support of the executive in its purported drive towards a one-party state.

We are in July, the 2027 election is yet about six months away, and there are at least twenty registered, INEC-recognised, political parties in Nigeria as I write this. But one of the most contentious issues on which the NBA (or is it its leadership?) has been prominently critical concerns the transmission of election results. Many lawyers, including those in the NBA leadership, have gone out on a limb to support the opposition parties’ call for ‘real-time electronic transfer’ of election results. Nothing anyone said about the dangers that constituted made any sense to either the opposition politicians or their NBA supporters, who as public commentators, media analysts and pundits excoriated the ruling party, the executive, INEC and the National Assembly that upheld the decision to marry both the manual and digital models of election result management.

The opposition parties are still breathing fire and brimstone on the matter. But the emptiness of their position was made visible the moment the time came for the political parties to produce both the digital and paper registers of their membership ahead of the party primaries in May. Suddenly, the advocates of real-time electronic transfer of results became dumb as they stumbled from pillar to post looking for a way out of the registration. They had been caught flat-footed and unable to register their members within the stipulated deadline. It was not until the deadline was extended, following judicial interventions, that the parties were able to save face and produce their membership registers.

That was the same embarrassing situation that the NBA was thrown into when its 2026 election that produced the NBA president-elect was stalled for several hours after the election portal experienced a technical glitch that locked out many of its members from participating in the election. There were multiple reports of cyber-attacks and a total breakdown of electoral capacity for several hours after the election was supposed to have started. Many lawyers were not able to log into the voting portal or voted without their votes being counted. It was chaos that had been foretold but which the NBA leadership chose to ignore, only to produce a result that has cast an unnecessary and avoidable shadow over the victory of a candidate that many believed would still have won had the election been delayed to attend to the pitfalls identified in the weeks leading to the election.

This was an election of just over 82,000 participants, yet the loud-mouthed NBA and its ever-litigious members that are quick to ‘approach’ the courts for the judicial interpretation of the most transparent issues have lost their voice. Yet they would sit in judgment over other Nigerians and make generalised claims about a country of 250 million people, 100 million of whom are eligible to vote, based on their experience of 100,000 lawyers. In the end only 26,184 of the 82,172 registered voters participated in the NBA presidential election. The winner, with 12,317 votes, got 47.18 per cent of the votes cast for the presidential election. Lateef Omoyemi Akangba polled 7,934 votes (30.39 per cent) and Olumuyiwa Akinboro polled 5,855 votes (22.43 per cent) to emerge, respectively, as the first and second runners-up. 

Now, the NBA is asking for understanding – the type it never extended to the winners of the 2023 presidential election or to INEC, on whom they heaped all the blame for the technical glitch that affected the 2023 election. They are not telling us that turnout for their election was low or that the combined votes of the losers outstripped those of the winner in order to delegitimise the result or, in fact, establish how unpopular the winner is. All is silent, and the NBA craves our understanding. I fear who no fear lawyers!

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