*Says “The Entire Warri Branch Was Not Captured In The List Of Those Who Voted”
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Lateef Omoyemi Akangbe, SAN, has filed a reply to the answer of the Electoral Committee of the Nigerian Bar Association in his petition challenging the election to the office of President of the Nigerian Bar Association held on Saturday, 18 July 2026, alleging that the Committee’s own publications contradict one another, that more votes were declared than the Committee’s published list of voters accounts for, and that the entire Warri Branch was recorded as having cast no vote at all.
The reply, dated 3 August 2026, is filed before the NBA National Officers Election Appeals Committee sitting in Abuja. The respondents are the Incorporated Trustees of the Nigerian Bar Association, the Electoral Committee of the Nigerian Bar Association, and Mrs Oyinkansola Badejo-Okunsanya, SAN, who was declared winner of the election.
The Ground Of The Petition
The Petitioner states that his petition is brought under Part X, paragraphs 1(a) and 11 of the Constitution of the Nigerian Bar Association 2015, as amended in 2025, and that his complaint is that the election was invalid by reason of substantial non-compliance with the NBA Constitution and the Committee’s Revised Guidelines 2026.
He clarifies the nature of his case in several places. “The remedy that the Petitioner seeks and the case it is stating is not whether the 2nd Respondent conducted the 18th July 2026 election in substantial compliance with the NBA Constitution or the 2026 Electoral Guidelines or not, but that the actions of the 2nd Respondent did not comply with the NBA Constitution and the 2026 Electoral Guidelines, of which non-compliance led to effects that substantially affected the results of the election held on that day, and upon which the Honourable Committee is being urged to nullify.”
On The Preliminary Objection
Replying to the Committee’s notice of preliminary objection, the Petitioner says that if it were argued that he came under a wrongly cited law, “the fact that it is a wrongly cited law is not relevant to doing justice to the matter,” and that courts give no negative effect to a wrongly cited law where a party is entitled to a remedy, as to do otherwise would amount to technical justice.
On the listing of four respondents on the first page of the petition, he describes it as an obvious typographical error arising from the inadvertent use of the enter key, says the second and third respondents named there are one person, and states that the misnomer is curable by amendment, an application for which has been filed. He adds that the Committee’s counsel cannot make jurisdictional arguments on behalf of the first respondent, since “a counsel cannot, on behalf of another party, make a complaint that does not affect it in any manner as though a busybody.”
Over-Voting: “25,901 And Not The 26,184”
The central figure allegation in the reply concerns the difference between the Committee’s own two sets of numbers.
The Petitioner states that the Committee published a document titled “Publication of the List of Members Who Voted, Sorted by Branch,” and that the total number of persons on that list is 25,901. He then points to paragraph 25(viii) of the Committee’s answer, in which the Committee states that 26,184 persons, representing 31.86 per cent, voted in the election.
“This figure directly contradicts the 2nd Respondent’s published list of persons who it claimed and documented as having voted; and the total from that published list is 25,901 and not the 26,184 as stated in this paragraph,” the reply states.
He draws the inference from that gap. “This contradiction gives further basis for the Petitioner’s contentions and complaints, to wit, that the 2nd Respondent was incapable of simple administrative processes relevant to supervising this exercise in an accurate and forthright manner, and did not comply with the relevant provisions of the NBA Constitution in conducting a seamless election in accordance with its own Guidelines.”
The reply reproduces the branch by branch table drawn from the Committee’s publication, running from Aba with 255 votes through to Zaria with 140, and including Lagos at 3,470, Abuja at 4,120, Ikeja at 1,338, Port Harcourt at 1,197, Ibadan at 700, Benin at 677, Kano at 609, Jos at 593 and Owerri at 547, with an entry listed simply as “UNKNOWN” recording 8 votes. The table totals 25,901 across 140 entries.
“The Entire Warri Branch Was Not Captured”
The Petitioner further alleges that the Committee’s comprehensive list of actual voters, published and transmitted to members and candidates on 20 July 2026, is inaccurate and conflicts with the Committee’s other publications.
“Also, the entire votes for Warri Branch are absent in the 2nd Respondent’s publication of 20th July 2026,” the reply states.
He returns to the point. “The 20th of July 2026 publication by the 2nd Respondent displayed tally discrepancies. The entire Warri Branch was not captured in the list of those who voted. The absence of the entire Warri Branch agrees with the Petitioner’s contention that the supposed list is inaccurate, and the basis of the Petitioner’s claim is well founded.”
Two Voters’ Registers: “82,213” Against “82,172”
The reply also alleges an inconsistency in the register of eligible voters itself.
The Petitioner states that by an email dated 11 July 2026 at 12:24am, headed “Publication of the Final Voters Register,” the Committee posted a link to the final voters list, and that the summary of the data at that link gives the total of eligible voters as 82,213.
He contends that the Committee’s own answer discloses a different register. “The 2nd Respondent by its averment has shown that there is another voters’ list that was used, by its admission that there is instead 82,172 total list of voters of which 26,184 voted, showing 41 individuals less than the one published by the 2nd Respondent on July 11, 2026. This is just part of the inconsistencies.”
He adds that deducting the number of those published as having voted from the 82,213 figure is the source of his figure of 56,107 members who were unable to vote, and that the number “is not manufactured.”
The 2025 Call Set: “About 10,166 Members”
A substantial part of the reply concerns members called to the Bar in 2025.
The Petitioner states that paragraph 6 of the Committee’s Electronic Voting Guidelines 2026 provided for two stages of authentication, the first being verification by Supreme Court Call Numbers and the receipt of One-Time Passwords.
He states that the 2025 call set, comprising about 5,728 candidates called at the mid-year ceremonies in July 2025 and a further 4,437 called in September 2025, made up of 4,429 from the February examinations and 8 from previous sessions, together about 10,166 eligible members, “were disenfranchised to vote, as no member of that set could use his or her SCN number to vote.”
He adds: “No formal notice from the 2nd Respondent was sent to them on how they could cast their votes. A few who were fortunate later got wind of the fact that they could rather use their examination numbers.”
He contends that had the whole set been able to authenticate and receive their passwords when due, “the numbers of counted votes, in itself, would clearly and substantially affect the eventual results.”
The Voting Window: “Commenced Fresh Elections At 7:35am”
The Petitioner alleges that the Committee departed from its own announced timetable without authority.
He states that by an email dated 16 July 2026 at 10:57pm, the Committee announced that voting would run from 12:00am to 11:59pm on the Saturday, in line with its Revised Guidelines 2026, and that the date and time were ratified by the National Executive Council.
According to the reply, the Committee instead “unilaterally decided to migrate the voting public to another voting platform and commenced fresh elections at 7:35am without getting further ratification from NEC, and extended the closure of the new election beyond 11:59pm of 18th July 2026 to 7:35am of 19th July 2026.” He describes this as non-compliant with paragraph 3 of the Revised Electoral Guidelines 2026.
The Cyberattack Claim: “Not Supported By An Iota Of Proof”
The Petitioner denies that the alleged cyberattack has been established.
He states that when the website went down, the Committee did not invite the candidates or their ICT agents to see what was happening, and that his own ICT agent was specifically asked to stay away. “Whatever was the issue was only determined by the 2nd Respondent and stated in their email of 3:01am as a coordinated cyber attack, which till date is unverified.”
Addressing the Committee’s plea that Cloudflare logs confirmed the platform was targeted by outside scanning thirty-four times between roughly 01:40 and 05:29 WAT on 18 July, and that four different source addresses were involved, the Petitioner says the Committee “have not provided both the logs from Cloudflare and the four different source addresses” and “has failed to produce the technical records.” He describes the account as unsupported and says the Committee has refused to provide backend logs and comprehensive incident reports.
He also contends that the Committee’s own pleading undercuts it. “The 2nd Respondent has stated that its own automated controls blocked those requests and, in the same sentence, that those controls also prevented its own technical personnel from completing corrective work. This is self-defeating, as it establishes that the 2nd Respondent was also unable to determine and ensure that the portal was cyber-attack resistant.”
On the migration itself, he says the Committee did not invite him, his agent, his IT consultants, the other candidates or the National Executive Council to satisfy themselves that the new platform was in good order before it was deployed, and that the pre-election mock demonstration cannot stand in place of that verification. He adds that because of that failure he cannot verify the Committee’s assertion that no single vote had been cast before the old platform was shut down.
He further points to what he describes as a contradiction over the official domain, noting that the Committee’s 3:01am notice warned members that the only official voting portal was the address it named, while the Committee has, in his account, “surprisingly come out to say that the approved domain was not the approved domain.”
The One Hour Six Minute Gap And The Admin Test Vote
The reply challenges the Committee’s assertion that voting progressed seamlessly for four to five hours after the restart.
The Petitioner states that on the Committee’s own list of those who voted, “between 10:28am and 11:34am, voting was drastically disrupted such that votes were not accepted from eligible voters from 139 Branches except from Aba Branch, where only 14 votes were accepted during that one-hour-six-minute interruption.”
He then draws attention to one of those entries. “It is interesting to note that of the 14 votes, a vote was sent as a test by the ADMIN of the software provider engaged by the 2nd Respondent.” The extract reproduced in the reply shows that entry, timed at 11:14:30 WAT, described as live admin monitoring and expressly marked as not a genuine member.
He submits that the entry “goes directly to whether the published list of voters by the 2nd Respondent reflects an accurate list of members, and to what extent the 2nd Respondent’s administrative access existed over the live system during polling, and to what was being done during the interruption.”
On OTP Failures And Lagos Branch
The Petitioner says the Committee’s own answer admits that sustained traffic delayed the delivery of One-Time Passwords, and that its email of 18 July at 5:33pm acknowledged delays.
“Whilst paragraph 25(ii) of the answer states that voting progressed seamlessly, paragraph 25(iii) contradicts it, as it admits that sustained traffic delayed the delivery of the OTPs,” he states.
He rejects the characterisation of the turnout as apathy, saying eligible voters were unable to vote “not out of apathy, but because the system did not provide an OTP that enabled them to vote until voting ended on 19 July 2026.” He states that complaints sent to the help desk went unanswered and that he will produce screenshots of the emails sent to the support address.
On his own branch figures, he states that out of over 15,000 eligible voters in the NBA Lagos branch according to the Committee’s voters list, only about 3,470 were able to vote according to the Committee’s own report, “despite many members on the NBA Lagos platform expressing frustration of their inability to vote on 18 July 2026.”
He also alleges a pattern in the tally. “Every 10 seconds the votes of the 3rd Respondent kept increasing at precise geometric progression of the votes at the top of each hour, which led to the eventual declaration as the winner.”
“I Could Not Vote For Myself”
The Petitioner states that he was himself unable to cast a ballot.
“It has never been heard in the history of electronic voting during the NBA elections that the Petitioner, as a candidate for the election to the office of President of the NBA, would be unable to cast his vote and vote for himself,” the reply states. “The inability to vote for himself is indicting and evidences the non-receipt of OTP faced across board, as well as the gross incompetence of the 2nd Respondent and its service provider.”
On His ICT Consultant’s Report
Responding to the Committee’s contention that his own consultant’s report contradicts the petition, the Petitioner quotes the report directly.
He cites the executive summary, which states that “no evidence available to the undersigned established unauthorised alteration of vote records. However, the information made available was insufficient to provide independent technical assurance regarding the cause and impact of the interruptions, the relationship between the voting addresses, the controls applied to OTP support requests or the completeness and integrity of the underlying election records.”
He also cites the section on mandate, scope, method and limitations, in which the consultant states that he “was not provided access to source code, deployment configuration, databases, cloud consoles, server or application logs, audit trails, DNS configuration, SMS gateway records, incident-management records or independent security reports,” and that the report “therefore does not certify the platform or reconstruct the incidents conclusively.”
He states that his consultant, who was to have been allowed to observe the backend along with the consultants of other candidates, was denied access and asked by the Committee’s agents to stay away from where voting was taking place. He adds that a large LED screen “did not provide proof of the cyber attack the 2nd Respondent claimed, nor did it show the protocols the 2nd Respondent deployed before it migrated to a new platform.”
Documents Sought From The Committee
The Petitioner states that the documents required to prove several paragraphs of his petition are in the Committee’s possession and have already been requested.
“The disenfranchisement is not merely a test case. It is actual, and the metadata will reveal all the unsuccessful attempts on registered voters who made attempts to vote but could not because of no OTPs,” he states, adding that the Committee is required by the NBA Constitution and the 2026 Guidelines to produce that information before the Committee.
He states that the identities of all voters who were unable to vote, including his own supporters, are with the Committee, and that upon release of the reports the Appeals Committee would be able to conduct the proceeding and reveal the identities within the confines of the rules and in compliance with the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023.
The Case In Summary
The Petitioner’s overall submission is that the admitted cyberattack claim and the admitted delay in delivery of passwords left it unverifiable whether more than 68 per cent of eligible voters, which he puts at 56,107 members and describes as twice the number of those recorded as having voted, wanted to vote or were able to do so.
“Because of not being able to determine whether more than 68% voted or not, because of the non-compliance of the 2nd Respondent, the election conducted by the 2nd Respondent on 18 July 2026 was not free, fair, transparent, credible, and the outcome could not have reflected the wishes and aspirations of the members of the NBA,” the reply states.
The reply moves the contest onto ground that can be tested on documents rather than on impressions, and that is its significance. Two of the allegations require no expert evidence at all. The first is arithmetical: if the Committee’s published branch by branch list totals 25,901 while its answer puts the figure at 26,184, one of the two documents is wrong, and the Committee will have to say which and why. The second is the register: 82,213 in the July publication against 82,172 in the answer.
The Warri allegation is of a different character. A branch recording no vote whatsoever on a published list is either an accurate reflection of what happened or an omission in the publication. If it is an omission, then the list that the Committee issued in the name of transparency is incomplete, and the total drawn from it cannot be relied upon. If it is accurate, it calls for an explanation of how an entire branch was unable to participate.
The admin test vote appearing among only fourteen accepted ballots during a one hour six minute window is the most delicate item, because it goes to administrative access over the live system during polling rather than to any allegation of altered votes. Notably, the Petitioner’s own consultant found no evidence of unauthorised alteration of vote records, and the Petitioner does not assert otherwise. His case is that the consultant was given nothing with which to reach any conclusion either way, which is why the production of logs, audit trails and gateway records is the pivot on which the petition now turns.
What follows is therefore procedural before it is substantive. If the Appeals Committee orders production of the backend records, the factual disputes about the attack, the migration and the failed authentications become capable of resolution. If it does not, the petition will fall to be decided on the documents already in the public domain, where the discrepancies the Petitioner has identified are, at present, unexplained.
Editorial notes: Three points before publishing. First, the reply does not state the membership figure for Warri Branch; the “751 members” figure in circulation is not in this document, so confirm its source before attributing it. Second, the reply says the entire Warri Branch is absent from the publication rather than that it recorded zero votes, and the distinction matters. Third, one paragraph of the document refers to voting commencing on “Saturday 18 May 2026” and another to “Saturday the 10th July 2026,” which read as typographical errors for 18 July 2026; treat them as such but do not quote them as dates. These are untested allegations in a live proceeding, and the Electoral Committee and the declared winner are entitled to a right of reply, which you should seek before publication.
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