NBA ELECTION: Badejo-Okusanya, Afam Okeke in early leads amid tech disruption, rigging claims
Mrs. Oyinkansola Badejo-Okusanya, SAN, and Mr. Afam Okeke have taken comfortable early leads in the ongoing national elections of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) for the positions of President and General Secretary, respectively.
The electronic voting exercise, which commenced on Saturday, July 18, 2026, saw an initial wave of high voter turnout despite experiencing technical hitches early in the day.
In the race for the NBA presidency, Mrs. Badejo-Okusanya, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, has maintained a steady lead since the polls opened.
Provisional results released as of 7:30 PM on Saturday showed that out of the 22,863 ballots cast by that hour, Badejo-Okusanya secured 10,554 votes. Her closest rival, Lateef Omoyemi Akangbe, SAN, trailed behind with 7,020 votes, while Olumuyiwa Akinboro pulled 5,289 votes.
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The pattern of the race was established early in the day. By 11:00 AM, Badejo-Okusanya had already pocketed 4,139 votes, compared to Akangbe’s 3,359 and Akinboro’s 2,567.
If she maintains this momentum, Badejo-Okusanya will succeed the incumbent NBA President, Afam Osigwe, SAN.
Meanwhile, the race for the strategic office of the NBA General Secretary sees Mr. Afam Okeke taking an early advantage.
Okeke, the immediate past Chairman of the NBA Abuja Branch (Unity Bar), surged ahead of his opponent early in the afternoon. As of 1:25 PM on Saturday, the official election portal showed Okeke leading with 4,784 votes, while his rival, Dr. Rapulu Nduka, trailed with 3,452 votes.
The winner of this contest will succeed the incumbent General Secretary, Dr. Mobolaji Ojibara, to manage the secretariat of Africa’s largest professional legal association for a two-year term.
The 2026 NBA national e-voting exercise did not fly without turbulence. The election followed months of intense campaigns and various legal disputes regarding the electoral guidelines.
On the election day itself, the Electoral Committee of the Nigerian Bar Association (ECNBA) had to issue an official apology to members following a delay in the commencement of the polls.
According to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), the e-voting platform suffered a coordinated cyberattack just as voting was scheduled to begin at noon on Saturday. To safeguard the integrity of the process, the ECNBA IT team temporarily took the portal offline to neutralize the threat. Voting eventually resumed smoothly after the system was migrated to a new, secure domain.
Waiting for the final verdict
The ECNBA has reminded members and the public that all currently circulating figures remain provisional. The official and final outcomes will only be announced after the total completion of voting, collation, and rigorous verification by the electoral umpire.
General Secretary candidate alleges rigging
Meanwhile, a candidate for the position of General Secretary in the elections, Chidi Ezenwafor, has raised serious allegations of electoral malpractice, technical anomalies, and potential vote preloading.
In an official press release titled “NBA National Elections 2026: Our Position on the Ongoing Electoral Process,” Ezenwafor detailed a catalog of irregularities that he claims have severely compromised the transparency and integrity of the lawyers’ poll.
’Phantom votes’ before polls opened
According to Ezenwafor, the election—originally scheduled to kick off at 12:01 a.m.—was delayed by several hours, eventually commencing at approximately 7:35 a.m. However, the candidate alleged that immediately upon the official opening, the system already displayed recorded votes for specific candidates.
”Upon commencement, it became apparent that certain candidates already had votes reflected against their names before the official opening of the polls, placing them in an early lead,” Ezenwafor stated, calling it a pattern that persisted throughout the day.
Adding weight to the rigging allegations, Ezenwafor revealed that several members who managed to vote later discovered their digital ballot receipts carried timestamps ranging between 2:00 a.m. and 3:00 a.m.—hours before the Electoral Committee of the NBA (ECNBA) officially opened the voting portal.
Furthermore, the candidate noted that vote tallies for specific individuals mysteriously continued to climb even during prolonged periods when the voting portal was completely down and inaccessible to members.
”This has inevitably given rise to a strong presumption among many members that such votes may have been preloaded into the system before voting commenced,” the statement read.
Sabotaged monitoring and technical meltdown
Ezenwafor also took aim at the ECNBA’s sudden, late-night administrative shifts, which he suggests crippled the candidates’ ability to independently audit the process. He disclosed that at 5:58 p.m. on the eve of the election, the ECNBA abruptly demanded that candidates submit the particulars of their IT consultants by a strict 9:00 p.m. deadline.
Given the short three-hour window, Ezenwafor argued that candidates were significantly constrained from effectively deploying independent technical monitors to watch over the electronic voting infrastructure.
The election day itself was reportedly marred by severe technical failures. As of 8:00 p.m. on election day, only about 23,000 votes had been cast out of over 82,000 eligible voters—representing a meager 28% voter turnout after nearly twelve hours of polling.
Ezenwafor attributed the low turnout to repeated portal glitches and extended periods of system downtime; the widespread failure of members to receive mandatory One-Time Passwords (OTPs) required to vote; and the designated ECNBA help lines reportedly going unanswered throughout the crisis.
