The race for the presidency of the Nigerian Bar Association has taken a sharply confrontational turn as prominent lawyer and rights advocate, Chidi Anselm Odinkalu, launched a blistering attack on frontline aspirant Aare Olumuyiwa Akinboro SAN, accusing him of working to disenfranchise NBA members through alleged judicial manipulation.
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Odinkalu’s reaction came barely hours after Akinboro issued a detailed statement denying claims that he intended to secure the NBA presidency through court orders rather than the votes of members.
In the statement, Akinboro had defended the Egbe Amofin consultation process and posed pointed questions to fellow aspirants over the timing of their objections.
But Odinkalu was having none of it. In a post on social media platform X, the former Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission dismissed Akinboro’s statement as an insult to the collective intelligence of Nigerian lawyers.
Odinkalu pointed out that he is not a member of Egbe Amofin and that a clear majority of lawyers eligible to vote in NBA elections are similarly ineligible to belong to the body. He argued that Akinboro’s focus on defending the Egbe Amofin process was therefore directed at the wrong audience.
The lawyer went further, directly accusing Akinboro and his supporters of working behind the scenes to arrange judges in Ibadan and elsewhere to impose his candidacy on the Association and strip members of their right to vote.
Odinkalu vowed to resist any attempt to disenfranchise NBA members based on what he described as side deals within an entity that most lawyers have no connection to. He warned that he would fight with everything at his disposal and promised to keep Akinboro and his enablers on both the Bar and the Bench occupied and exposed.
Meanwhile, the controversy has also drawn in senior lawyer Chief Jibrin Samuel Okutepa SAN, who has come under fire for representing Egbe Amofin in related court processes. Okutepa expressed shock at the level of personal attacks being directed at lawyers for simply performing their professional duties.
The senior advocate lamented that matters before the court are now being discussed on the basis of partisan interests rather than the legal issues raised. He disclosed that he has been called names and questioned for accepting a brief, as though he owed an explanation to those demanding he account for his professional choices.
Okutepa, who has spent about 35 years at the Bar and nearly 15 years as a Senior Advocate, said he has never witnessed the level of insults and rudeness currently being exhibited in the name of NBA politics, describing himself as shocked beyond comprehension.
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