Emerges as Second Woman for Exalted Office
By Samuel Olusegun Precious
Oyinkansola Badejo-Okusanya, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), has emerged as the next president of the Nigeria Bar Association after she polled the most votes when voting officially ended Sunday morning.
Mrs Badejo-Okusanya, the only female among the three presidential candidates, polled 12,317 votes to emerge as the winner of the election, which was held through electronic voting for 24 hours, from 7:35 a.m. on Saturday to 7:34 a.m. on Sunday.
Her emergence makes her the second woman as NBA President after Priscilla Kuye.
She defeated her two male challengers, receiving 47.18 per cent of the 26,106 ballots cast in the presidential election, based on the final tally on the Live Election Results dashboard maintained by the Electoral Committee of the NBA (ECNBA).
Lateef Omoyemi Akangbe, also a SAN, secured 7,934 votes (30.39 per cent) to come second and Olumuyiwa Akinboro, another SAN, polled 5,855 votes (22.43 per cent) to take the third position.
The live results dashboard updated every 10 seconds throughout the voting period.
The final results showed that the total votes cast across 13 national officers’ elections stood at 26,184, representing 31.86 per cent voter turnout of the total 82,172 registered voters.
However, the ECNBA had yet to officially announce the results as of the time of filing this report.
When inaugurated, Mrs Badejo-Okusanya will be the 33rd president of the NBA.
She will be the second woman to lead the Nigerian Bar in its 66-year history, following Priscilla Kuye, who became the first president of the association of Nigerian lawyers in 1991 and held the position until 1992.
The NBA will inaugurate its new national officers who emerged from Saturday’s election during its Annual General Conference scheduled for August 21 and 28 August in Port Harcourt, Rivers State. The outgoing president, Afam Osigwe, and his co-executives are expected to hand over to the new leadership during the conference.
Controversies, low voter turnout
Characterised by controversies leading up to Saturday morning’s opening of voting, the election recorded a low turnout of 26,184 compared to the over 40,000 who voted in the last 2024 election.
In the 2024 election, Mr Afam Osigwe polled more than 20,000 votes, more than half of the ballots cast, to emerge the winner of the presidential race. Mrs Badejo-Okusanya won with 12,317 votes, about 47.18 per cent of the total votes cast in the presidential election.
Voting, which was scheduled to commence at 12 a.m. on Saturday, did not commence until 7.35 a.m., the latest twist in the controversies that characterised the build-up to the election.
According to the ECNBA, the delay was caused by a “deliberate, coordinated and sustained cyberattack” that the voting platform suffered from external actors seeking to disrupt the election.
The election process has been fiercely criticised for a lack of transparency, a perennial issue that has dogged every election cycle since the NBA adopted electronic voting in 2016.
Many called for the postponement of the election, citing issues with the constitution of the ECNBA (the body that oversaw the poll) and the credibility of the voter register.
The intervention by the Attorney-General of the Federation, Lateef Fagbemi, failed to resolve the issues, and uncertainty continued to cloud the election even two days before its scheduled
Runner-up alleges irregularities
Before voting ended on Sunday, Mr Akangbe, who placed second in the presidential race, alleged that the election was marred by a series of irregularities.
In a protest letter to the ECNBA, Mr Akangbe described the election as a “catastrophic structural and technical collapse” of the electoral process and demanded its immediate suspension.
He alleged that the electronic voting portal became inaccessible to many of the association’s more than 82,000 accredited voters, with users reporting authentication failures, error messages and repeated timeouts. He also questioned reports that votes cast before the outage could be cancelled if the process restarted, arguing that such a development undermined confidence in the election.
