The Nigerian Bar Association has said its forthcoming Annual General Conference in Port Harcourt is not compensation for the body’s botched conference in the state in 2025, which was subsequently relocated to Enugu State.
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NBA President, Afam Osigwe, SAN, stated this in Port Harcourt on Tuesday during a media briefing organised by the Local Organising Committee for the forthcoming 66th NBA Annual General Conference.
Earlier, the Chairman of the LOC for the NBA AGC, Tonye Krukrubo, SAN, disclosed that the association’s 2026 conference, with the theme, ‘Beyond Limits,’ will hold in Port Harcourt from Friday, August 21, to August 28 at the Yakubu Gowon Stadium, Elekahia, in Port Harcourt.
Recall that the NBA had in 2025 suddenly relocated its scheduled AGC from Port Harcourt to Enugu, citing the state of emergency then in place and the appointment of an administrator, which it said was undemocratic and unconstitutional.
Following the conference’s relocation to Enugu, the then Administrator of Rivers State, had, in a statement by his media aide, Hector Igbikiowubo, asked the NBA to return the N300m allegedly released to the association as support by the Rivers State Governor, Siminalayi Fubara, before the latter’s suspension by President Bola Tinubu by reason of the emergency rule.
Ibaa also threatened to take legal action to recover the state funds from the NBA if it refused to heed the reimbursement call after it decided to move the conference out of the state.
However, Osigwe, while answering a question directed at him, reiterated that the NBA had made its position clear at the time that the conference would return to the oil-rich state when democratic institutions were fully restored there, insisting that the decision to do so now should not be viewed as restitution.
He stated, “Let me thank Tonye Krukrubo for allowing me to get crashed this press briefing. We are not meant to be part of it, but when I heard that it was meeting with the press to also sensitise the public about this conference and also to apologise for the inconveniences.
“I know that some of us sometimes want to use these hotels. We will be using them on your behalf for this time. So just indulge us for a week or thereabouts.
“To say that Port Harcourt is a beautiful city, it’s a very historical city. And in the annals of the history of the Bar, it occupies the pride of place, both for good and for bad, but more for the good.
“And it is a practice of the NBA to take the conference from one city to the other. It gives us a better opportunity to get to know the different people’s culture and places in Nigeria.
“Port Harcourt happens to be our destination this year. At the moment, over (23,000) lawyers are expected to descend on Port Harcourt. And they will come with service providers, contractors, and other people that provide ancillary services.”
“And so we’ll be here, and a lot of money will be injected into the local economy. And I’m talking about hundreds of billions of Naira. And that explains why in the Western world, cities lobby to host such major conferences.
“We (NBA) left Port Harcourt because we said the declaration of state of emergency on Port Harcourt, an appointment of a Sole Administrator was unconstitutional.
“And we stated that if normalcy and democracy return to Port Harcourt, we’ll come back. It’s not compensatory. So, if you leave a place because of the prevalence of a condition that does not align with your principles, and then that situation abates.
“There’s no reason why you can’t come back there. So, we’re back here because a democratically elected governor is back in place, and the circumstances are such that we believe meets the constitutional muster for NBA to operate under a climate of constitutionalism and come back to hold his conference.
“And that was fully explained in our statement as to why we are leaving and why we are coming back. Nobody needs to be compensated”, the NBA President declared.
Continuing, the Chairman of the LOC for the forthcoming NBA conference, Krukrubo, said, “You’re all aware that the annual general conference of the Nigerian Bar Association is going to be held in Port Harcourt from the 21st August, 2026 to the 28th of August this year.”
He said the AGC planning committee, led by Abdul Mohammed under the auspices of the NBA President, had constituted a local organising committee to collaborate and work with the AGCPC to ensure a seamless and smooth conference.
Krukrubo, SAN, added, “We would like, first of all, to inform members of the general public that this conference will be held at the Yakubu Gowon Stadium around the Elekehia axis of Port Harcourt.
“We estimate well over 24,000 legal practitioners from across the country and a handful of them from outside Nigeria that will be part and parcel of this year’s conference.”
He explained that the conference promises to be educative and enlightening, allowing members to discuss some of the burning legal issues that affect not just Nigeria and the continent, but the world at large.
Speaking further on the theme of the conference, the NBA President, Osigwe, SAN, emphasised that Nigeria needs to go ‘beyond limits’ in view of its abundant natural resources and vast human potential.
According to him, “We (Nigeria) have potentials, but the body at rest in physics, we are told, has potential, but it’s not yet a body in motion. And we need Nigeria to move at the speed expected of a nation of its kind.
“We’ve been called Giant of Africa for a long time, but we’ve not yet shown that the giant has arisen and is achieving its full potentials.”
Our correspondent reports that the week-long conference will begin with a Jumat service on Friday, August 21, a health walk on Saturday, August 22, and will be climaxed with the inauguration of the new NBA national executive led by its 33rd President, Oyinkansola Badejo-Okusanya, who emerged after an election in July 2026.
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