*Says He Is Appalled by President-Elect’s Response to Complaints
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Joseph Bodunrin Daudu, SAN, the 25th President of the Nigerian Bar Association and a serving member of its Board of Trustees, has declared the outcome of the 2026 NBA national officers election “illegitimate and lacking in the average constituents of a free, fair and credible election,” demanded that a re-election be conducted to accommodate the more than 70 per cent of registered lawyers who were unable to vote, stated that he finds himself “unable to congratulate any member of this elected National Officers until justice has been served,” and warned that if the NBA leadership persists in insisting that a pristine election was conducted, dissatisfied members “may, if pushed to the wall, move in droves to form an honest association.”
Daudu, who was called to the Nigerian Bar in 1980 and has served as Chairman of the Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Committee for six years, a member of the Legal Practitioners Privileges Committee, a member of the National Judicial Council, and Chairman of the NBA All Purposes Committee from 2014 to 2018, set out his position in a detailed statement titled “The Continued Relevance of the Nigerian Bar Association.”
Daudu opened by setting out his credentials, explaining that he was doing so “not for reasons of self-promotion or aggrandisement but to show quite distinctively that I am a person interested not only in the affairs of the NBA but in anything that affects the legal profession in particular and Nigeria in general. I can therefore safely declare myself a stakeholder.”
He described the NBA as “the umbrella body of all Nigerian legal practitioners” and “a pressure group which ensures that all agencies and even government itself operate strictly within the bounds of the rule of law,” noting that its motto is “Promoting the Rule of Law.”
He clarified the association’s legal status: “The NBA is not a creation of statute but is recognised by name in several legislations including the Nigerian Constitution 1999. Such statutory mention does not make it a creature of the National Assembly. It is a voluntary association created under Part C of the Companies and Allied Matters Act.”
Daudu traced the current crisis to two reforms introduced over the past decade.
The first was “a switch in the mode of electing her national officers from the delegate and manual mode of election to the much disputed ‘universal suffrage’ whose excesses collapsed the first house in 1992 and left the Association comatose for six years until 1998 when Chief T.J.O. Okpoko SAN emerged as President and the beginning of the second house of the NBA.”
The second was “the introduction of electronic or computer based system of voting thought to be transparent and capable of eliminating glitches and illegitimacy from the process.”
He observed that “progressive elections since 2018 have posed serious credibility and legitimacy concerns,” noting that elections have become “heavily monetised with hapless candidates being forced by ‘barmen’ to spend humongous sums of money in the name of campaigns,” requiring travel “to virtually all the branches in the 36 states of Nigeria.”
Daudu explained that the 2026 election was zoned to “the West,” meaning the old Western and Mid-Western regions of the First Republic, and that this constitutional approval of zoning gave rise to regional pressure groups: Otu Oka Iwu and the Eastern Bar Forum for the East, Egbe Amofin and the Midwest Bar Forum for the West, and the Arewa Lawyers Forum and Middle Belt Lawyers Forum for the North.
He noted that Egbe Amofin conducted a screening and weeding process among four candidates and produced Aare Olumuyiwa Akinboro, SAN, as its preferred candidate. However, “the Midwest Bar Forum led by Ama Etuwewe SAN rejected the Egbe choice and actively promoted her own candidate in the person of Mrs Oyinkan Badejo-Okusanya SAN, a person under the Egbe umbrella, but who later emerged as the President-elect in highly disputed circumstances.”
Daudu placed on record his open support for Akinboro and explained his reasons.
“He was my General Secretary as the 25th President of the NBA and I could never have worked with a better GS. He was and still is hard working, industrious, honest, gentle mannered, brilliant, urbane and circumspect. A consummate bar man. Consequently, I had no option than to support him when he shared with me his aspiration to be the 33rd President of the NBA,” Daudu stated.
Daudu identified what he described as the major defects in the election, while noting that “the deficiencies of the just recently concluded election are legion.”
“The candidates had complained about the ill preparedness and probably bad faith of the election body, the ECNBA. It is alleged to have prepared its voters register not in line with the NBA Constitution. The election umpire also appointed untested and ill-prepared service providers, whose system for the provision of electronic voting crashed for the first six hours after voting commenced until, according to the election umpire, they moved to another server,” Daudu stated.
He then posed the question that he said remains unanswered: “So, who moved or authorised the movement to another server? This remains an unanswered sore point.”
Daudu identified mass disenfranchisement as the most important defect.
“Although approximately 80,000 lawyers were registered to vote, computer interference and/or unreliability allowed only 26,600 persons to vote. The rest, 70 per cent of willing and available voters, were schemed out of the voting exercise,” he stated.
“Consequently, I had no hesitation in adjudging the outcome of the election as illegitimate and lacking in the average constituents of a free, fair and credible election,” Daudu declared.
“There is the complaint that during the campaign period, high officials of the NBA actively campaigned at various NEC meetings for the candidacy of the person who eventually emerged as President-elect,” Daudu stated.
Daudu described the fourth complaint as “frightful” and warned that it must not be treated lightly.
“There is the frightful complaint that the votes had been predetermined and the system had been preset to achieve a constant margin of lead between the candidates as configured by the powers that be who control the voting portal,” he stated.
“This last allegation must not be treated lightly. It strikes at the heart and soul of our leadership selection system. For over six to eight years now, the rumours of election manipulation have been rife in the NBA system. Over the years, stakeholders have always demanded for a system that allows not only for post-election audit but for the security of the back end of the server that was used to conduct the election. Both matters appear to have been treated with great levity,” Daudu stated.
“I will not have any hesitation, if I had the powers, to declare this election inconclusive and/or illegitimate,” he declared.
Daudu explained why NBA elections must be beyond reproach, invoking the classical standard.
“The reason why NBA elections must be seen to be above board, like Caesar’s wife Calpurnia, is that the NBA is the conscience of the larger society,” he stated.
He then posed the question that has become central to the post-election debate: “Nigeria is on the throes of conducting its own general elections in the year 2027. Having itself conducted such a visibly badly conducted election, will the NBA have the moral justification and standing to challenge the larger Nigerian government should, and this is only speculative, God forbid, that the general elections is marred by poor or indeed fraudulent electoral practices?”
Daudu called for the deficiencies to be acknowledged and for a fresh election to be held.
“It is necessary at this stage for all parties to acknowledge these deficiencies in the election that was conducted by the ECNBA. If nothing, a re-election should be conducted to accommodate the well over 70 per cent of disenfranchised lawyers who were not allowed to vote at the election conducted last week,” he stated.
He warned of the consequences of refusal: “If the NBA powers that be persist or persevere in its apparent, unshakable belief that it conducted a pristine election, then it will be difficult to predict the future, as this election has struck at the unity of a hitherto united Bar.”
Daudu reserved pointed criticism for the response of the President-elect, Oyinkansola Badejo-Okusanya, SAN, to the complaints.
“I must also say that I am appalled by the position of the President-elect who views these complaints as merely a matter of perception. By treating these weighty complaints with such levity, it is clear that the President-elect has no intention to either dissociate herself from the system that brought her into office or prepare herself to clean the Augean stable,” Daudu stated.
“I find myself unable to congratulate any member of this elected National Officers until justice has been served and the needful done to put the Nigerian Bar Association on the right track,” he declared.
Daudu closed with what amounts to the most serious warning yet issued by a former NBA President in the current crisis.
“It is necessary to state at this point in time that because the NBA is not a statutory monopoly, dissatisfied members may, if pushed to the wall, move in droves to form an honest association that will push the ideals of good legal practice and honest political interaction as their prime objectives,” Daudu stated.
The warning rests on the legal point Daudu made at the outset: that the NBA is not a creature of statute but a voluntary association registered under Part C of the Companies and Allied Matters Act. Because membership is voluntary and the NBA holds no statutory monopoly over the representation of Nigerian lawyers, nothing in law prevents disaffected members from registering an alternative body.
“It is not too late to save the day. Those in charge know what to do,” Daudu concluded.
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