The Electoral Committee of the Nigerian Bar Association has published revised electronic voting guidelines for the 2026 NBA National Officers and General Council of the Bar elections scheduled for Saturday, July 18, 2026.

The guidelines, issued on Friday, July 10, as Item Eight of the revised election timetable, provide the operational, technical, security and data-protection framework for the electronic poll.

The ECNBA said the guidelines were issued pursuant to the NBA Constitution 2015, as amended in 2025, the Second Schedule governing electronic elections and the revised election timetable published on July 3, 2026.

The electronic voting platform will be implemented by Mikrodigital Connect, the appointed Electronic Voting Service Provider.

In a notice signed by the ECNBA Chairman, Aham Ejelam, SAN, and Secretary, Ibrahim Aliyu Nassarawa, the committee directed candidates, eligible voters, agents and other stakeholders to study and comply with the guidelines.

According to the committee, only lawyers whose names appear on the final voters’ register will be eligible to participate in the election.

Each voter must possess a valid Supreme Court Number, have access to the email address contained in the final register and successfully complete a two-stage authentication process before accessing the ballot.

Under the authentication procedure, a voter will first enter their Supreme Court Number, which will be checked against the final register.

A time-limited and single-use One-Time Password will then be sent to the voter’s registered email address. The voter must enter the OTP to complete authentication and access the electronic ballot.

The ECNBA said the platform would strictly enforce the “one member, one vote” principle through secure database validation, transaction locking and audit logging.

Once a ballot has been submitted, it will be permanently recorded and the voter marked as having voted. Any further attempt to vote with the same Supreme Court Number will be automatically rejected.

The committee also assured members that the system had been designed to guarantee complete ballot secrecy by separating voter authentication from vote recording.

According to the guidelines, ECNBA officials, observers, candidates and the electronic voting service provider will not be able to determine how an individual voter cast their ballot.

The voting process will involve visiting the official ECNBA e-voting portal, accepting the privacy notice, entering the voter’s registered Supreme Court Number, receiving and entering the OTP, accessing the ballot and selecting preferred candidates.

Voters will then be required to review their selections, submit their ballots and obtain confirmation reference numbers.

The committee warned that a ballot could not be edited or withdrawn after submission.

The platform will be accessible through Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari browsers and may be used on desktop computers, laptops, tablets and Android or iOS smartphones.

The ECNBA also announced that a nationwide mock voting exercise would take place on Saturday, July 11, 2026, to familiarise eligible voters with the platform ahead of the election.

It encouraged all verified voters to participate, explaining that the exercise was strictly a practice run and that all test data and mock votes would be cleared before the main election.

The committee further warned that voting OTPs would be sent only to the email addresses contained in the final register.

It said the voter verification and email-update window had closed and that the final register was frozen on July 10, 2026.

Members who failed to verify or update their email addresses before the deadline would not be permitted to redirect their OTPs to alternative email accounts.

The ECNBA consequently advised all eligible voters to ensure that they could access their registered email inboxes on election day.

It said the complete guidelines contain further provisions on technical specifications, data protection, security controls, election monitoring and results management.

The committee directed candidates, agents and voters to read the full document and comply with all procedures governing the July 18 election.

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