Senior Advocate of Nigeria, JCI Senator Mutalubi Ojo Adebayo, SAN, has accused the Electoral Committee of the Nigerian Bar Association of circulating what he described as a “fraudulent and padded” voters’ register ahead of the NBA 2026 national election scheduled for Saturday, July 18, 2026.
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In a statement dated July 7, 2026, in Ibadan, Adebayo alleged that the voters’ list published by the ECNBA was not the list of accredited voters for the election, but merely a wholesale list of legal practitioners who paid their practising fees on or before March 31, 2026.
He said the publication appeared to have been made in response to his earlier challenge to the committee to publish the list of accredited voters before the election.
According to him, members of the Bar should not allow the ECNBA to “deceive” them with the published list, insisting that only a clean and audited list of accredited voters can guarantee credibility in the election.
“We should not allow the ECNBA to deceive us with this purported voters list. What the ECNBA published and circulated is the list of all the legal practitioners who paid their practising fees on or before 31st March, 2026 and not the list of accredited voters for the 2026 NBA elections,” he said.
Adebayo challenged the ECNBA to disclose how many lawyers on the published list had actually responded to its call for verification of details and signified their intention to vote in the forthcoming election.
He cited himself as an example, saying he did not respond to the ECNBA’s notice requesting verification of details because he did not believe in the capacity of the present committee to conduct a free, fair, transparent and credible election.
Despite not verifying his details, Adebayo said his name still appeared on the published list simply because he paid his practising fee before the March 31 deadline.
He warned that this could create room for manipulation, alleging that the ECNBA and its alleged collaborators could harvest the details of lawyers who did not verify their information and send voting links to “contrived” email addresses for proxy voting.
“Since my name is on the fraudulent voters list and the ECNBA is aware that I did not verify my details, which means that I had indicated that I will not vote in the forthcoming kangaroo election of the Bar, the ECNBA and its cohorts can harvest my details and proceed to send a voting link to a contrived email address and do a proxy voting for me,” he alleged.
The senior lawyer further argued that relying on the published list as the voters’ register would be fraudulent and could set the machinery for the alleged manipulation and rigging of the Bar election in motion.
He also raised concerns that some lawyers whose names appeared on the list may have died after April 1, 2026, a day after the deadline for payment of practising fees, yet their names remained on the register as prospective voters.
According to him, if the list is accepted as the voters’ register, votes could allegedly be cast in the names of deceased members of the Bar.
“From 1st April, 2026, which was a day after the due date for the payment of the practising fees for the current year and which is the benchmark for what the ECNBA published and circulated as the voters list, some legal practitioners in the list published and circulated by the ECNBA had died, yet their names are still shown on the list as prospective voters in the election,” he said.
“If such is accepted as voters list, voting may be done by some election riggers on behalf of those deceased members of the Bar simply because their names are on the said fraudulent voters register,” he added.
Adebayo maintained that what the Bar needs ahead of the election is a cleaned-up and audited voters’ register, which he said can only be achieved through the publication of the list of accredited voters.
He urged members of the NBA to remain vigilant and reject what he described as a fundamental move to compromise the forthcoming election.
“I will therefore urge all members of the Bar to be vigilant, condemn and reject this primary, major and fundamental move by the ECNBA to compromise and manipulate the forthcoming NBA election with the publication and circulation of this fraudulent and padded voters register,” he said.
The NBA election is scheduled to hold on Saturday, July 18, 2026.
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