*Says NBA Poll Was Stage-Managed, Names Godfathers Who Have Lined Up Presidents Till 2038
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Chief Jibrin Samuel Okutepa, SAN, has delivered an extensive indictment of the 2026 Nigerian Bar Association national officers election, describing it as “a coronation” rather than an election, alleging that the entire process from the constitution of the Electoral Committee was “geared towards a predetermined position,” questioning the unexplained cyberattack narrative, insisting that the disenfranchisement of approximately 56,000 lawyers renders the outcome indefensible regardless of whether their votes would have changed the result, and warning that the mingling of judges and politicians threatens the survival of Nigerian democracy.
Okutepa spoke on the State of the Nation programme on Discuss Channel, Atlanta, in an interview titled “Judges Must Avoid Politicians.”
Okutepa opened by explaining why he had initially resolved to stop commenting on the association.
“If you look at my last tweets, I had said that I am done with talking about NBA, because it appears to me that NBA as a professional association is like an incorrigible sinner who has defiled all sense of purity, of clergymen of good conscience and good hearts,” he stated.
He rejected any suggestion that his criticism was rooted in his dispute with the outgoing President, Mazi Afam Osigwe, SAN, or in his support for a particular candidate.
“My challenge with NBA as a professional association didn’t start with Osigwe. And it will be unkind for anybody to think that it is because I supported a candidate that I became vocal. No,” Okutepa stated.
Okutepa, who was called to the Bar in 1991, traced the association’s electoral history in detail, noting that he was “a living witness to the problem that broke out in Port Harcourt in 1992.”
“NBA went into what appears to be very serious comatose, and it took the intervention of well-meaning bar men and women of good credit and repute to rebuild it. NBA came to life when it elected Chief T.J.O. Okpoko, SAN, from 1998 to 2000, through what the elders agreed to be the delegate system,” he recounted.
He listed the presidents produced under that system: Okpoko (1998-2000), Chief O.C.J. Okocha, SAN (2000-2002), Chief Wali, SAN (2002-2004), Chief Bayo Ojo, SAN (2004), Prince Lanke Odogiyon (who completed the term), Dr Abubakar Mahmoud (2006-2008), and others, “until it got to the turn of Augustine Alegeh, SAN, who then introduced what was then known and called universal adult suffrage.”
“The first lawyer to be elected under that system is A.B. Mahmoud, SAN, 2016 to 2018,” Okutepa stated.
Okutepa recalled that the challenge to electronic voting was raised from the very beginning.
“The election of A.B. Mahmoud, SAN, was challenged by J.K. Gadzama, who alleged that universal adult suffrage or electronic voting is susceptible to manipulation from the back end. In other words, while we proclaim universal adult suffrage, it was alleged, and not many of us believed then, that somebody can sit down in a room in Atlanta, Georgia, and defeat the collective will of Nigerian lawyers,” he stated.
“J.K. Gadzama went to court. I defended that election,” Okutepa disclosed.
He noted that the 2016 exercise under Law Pavilion as service provider had produced verifiable records: “That service provider did a marvellous and wonderful job, because that is Law Pavilion. If you go, you will see those who were accredited to vote and those who voted, and the voters registers are available for anyone to cross-check.”
“But from that time till today, we do not know how many people were accredited to vote and how many people voted. So instead of accrediting first, knowing how many people have been accredited and then going for voting, we now accredit and vote. In any democratic process, accreditation is fundamental as a process for credible election,” Okutepa stated.
On the 2018 election, he recalled: “Given what I saw, I wrote and I said I weep for the legal profession, that I have allowed darkness to overshadow its light. The leaders of the bar and elders of the bar became divided along partisan interests that do not, in my view, advance the purity, integrity and nobility of the legal profession.”
Okutepa gave a detailed account of what he described as the unconstitutional constitution of the Electoral Committee.
He explained that under the NBA Constitution in operation at the time, “the appointment of chairman, secretary and members of the ECNBA shall be done by the NEC, that is the National Executive Council.”
“In the Benin NEC meeting in November 2025, the President of the Bar was the one that made the appointment in his address. It was not on the agenda. It was not part of what was supposed to be discussed in that meeting. It was only a presidential agenda. And somebody moved a motion to adopt the agenda of the President and moved a motion for the ratification of the appointment done by the President,” Okutepa recounted.
“In law there is a world of difference between an appointing authority appointing, and an appointing authority ratifying what somebody else who is not empowered by law to appoint has done,” he stated.
He offered an analogy: “If the Nigerian Constitution provides that the Chairman of INEC shall be appointed by the President, and the President of the Senate in an address at a meeting attended by the President read out the name of the chairman and asked the meeting to ratify, would that appointment be properly done?”
Okutepa raised a further constitutional objection concerning when the committee was appointed.
“The NBA Constitution under which they purported to act says that the appointment of members of the ECNBA shall be done in the NEC meeting in the year of election. This ECNBA was appointed in the year preceding election,” he stated.
He then addressed the increase in committee membership from five to seven, which he said occurred at the Maiduguri NEC meeting in February.
“The President of the Bar purported to increase the number to seven under a new NBA Constitution which has a provision for presidential recommendation for NEC approval. That constitution was approved by the Corporate Affairs Commission on the 20th of January 2026,” Okutepa stated.
“I do not want to believe that Nigerian lawyers will want to be using a constitution that had not been approved by the relevant authority in 2025. And assuming we can rely on it, can NBA constitute only five members when the new constitution talks about seven members?” he asked.
Okutepa said these constitutional objections led Ibrahim Lawal and five others to obtain an injunction from the High Court in Ibadan restraining the ECNBA and the President from proceeding.
“But they ignored it. Even though that order had subsequently been set aside, it was done only in July. The principle of law of considerable antiquity that I know is that whosoever knows of an order of court, whether null and void, whether legal or illegal, has no right whatsoever to ignore it. And the people that carry placards on their heads to shout the loudest are members of the legal profession,” Okutepa stated.
“It got to a ridiculous level that the President of the Bar was interpreting the order and saying it has expired, yet they were on appeal. That’s what some of us found ridiculous,” he added.
Okutepa made his most serious allegation about the structure of power within the association.
“It was told to my hearing that the godfathers in NBA, that emerged soon after the election of President A.B. Mahmoud, that have been insistent on bringing universal suffrage that determines who becomes president, have lined up people they like who will be president of the Bar from now till 2038. We all know them, and they are working towards it,” he stated.
“Anyone that stands in their way will be crushed. And that is my offence,” Okutepa declared.
He described what he believes is at stake: “Some of us believe that an independent Bar is the partner for democratic growth and development. A Bar that is not being manipulated and remote-controlled by anybody, whether in power or out of power or within the Bar. A president of the NBA that will be in a position to take a balanced decision, not a political neophyte.”
He also disclosed that he was present when the outcome was predicted: “In this election, I was told in my presence that a particular candidate will come a distant third and they will work against him. And they worked against him. All the campaign of calumny, campaign of name-calling, ‘he is the candidate of Egbe,’ were all campaigns not rooted in the best interest of the Bar but in the interest of the cabal who want the Nigerian Bar Association to go in a direction that they can control.”
Okutepa explained the regional dynamics that shaped the contest.
“The Constitution of NBA recognises regional fora. This time around, the office of the President of the Bar was zoned to the South-West, and by constitutional configuration South-West includes Midwest,” he stated.
“Before then it had been alleged, and rightly in my view, that the Yoruba nation had colonised the leadership of the Nigerian Bar Association. And so it was reasoned rightly that in order for every part of Nigeria to have a sense of belonging, these offices should be zoned,” he explained.
“The Midwest, which is an integral part of the South-West but not necessarily of Yoruba extraction, began to take advantage of the crack in the Yoruba nation, and began to sponsor people who believe that they have a right and are not bound by decisions of the leaders and elders. That’s where the problem is,” Okutepa stated.
He described the Egbe Amofin screening process: “The Yoruba people under the auspices of Egbe invited everybody from Yoruba nation who was interested in running to indicate interest and apply to be screened, a kind of primary election, before producing a consensus candidate to the larger house for voting. They were screened, they agreed to be bound, the result was announced, and then they became rebellious.”
Okutepa offered a personal observation about the qualities that now determine who leads the Bar.
“Let me be honest with you. No matter what your feeling is about me, if I were to run for the office of President of the Nigerian Bar Association today, my stand on issues, my stand that things must be done right, are all disqualifying factors to be President of the Nigerian Bar Association,” he stated.
“In those days we were told honesty and integrity are essential attributes that you look for in the person who comes to public office. But I have a doubt whether that is what defines our election,” Okutepa stated.
Challenged on the distinction between a cyberattack and rigging, Okutepa responded with a series of questions.
“If there was a cyberattack, who attacked the cyber? When was it repaired? How was it repaired? Who repaired it? Who fixed it?” he asked.
“What was the hurry to continue with the election? More so that from the beginning the service provider appointed was a person who had no pedigree of conducting any election at all. And to compound the matter, that one-man company was in default of corporate responsibility from five years after it was incorporated up to and including the time it was appointed. They have not been able to tell us how they came about that service provider. What was his experience?” Okutepa stated.
Presented with the argument that even disenfranchised lawyers such as Maduka Onwukeme had conceded the result might have been the same, Okutepa rejected the reasoning outright.
“We are talking about right to fair process. The principle of law that I know that must apply to the elections of NBA is that where people had the right to vote and have been denied that right to vote, and their right to do what they needed to do has been violated, it does not matter if they had voted the result would have been the same. The process must be seen to be transparent,” he stated.
He noted that the turnout was 31.86 per cent, with nearly 56,000 lawyers not voting at all.
Asked whether this reflected voter apathy, Okutepa was emphatic: “It is not voter apathy. It was the incompetence of the service provider that made it impossible for people to vote.”
He drew a comparison with Nigeria’s conventional elections: “In Kogi State, INEC declared an election inconclusive. Why? Because the margin of the lead between the person leading and the people who were yet to vote was more. If the people who were yet to vote had been allowed to vote, who said that the person declared winner would have been the winner? If 56,000 other lawyers have not been given the opportunity…”
He also observed that “the person who was purportedly declared winner of the election didn’t vote for herself.”
Okutepa set out the single condition on which he would accept the outcome.
“If my sister had come out and said, ‘My dear brothers and sisters, my colleagues, I know that the process that produced me is faulty. I apologise. I’m going to reform it. I’m going to take a bold step to put an end to these controversies and quarrels. Please join hands to help me reform our electoral process so that it will be transparent, credible and for all lawyers to be happy about it,’ I will be the first person to congratulate her,” Okutepa stated.
“But to go around pontificating that she won by majority of lawful votes when the majority of Nigerian lawyers, about 52,000, were denied the opportunity of voting, I do not believe she won the election free, fair and credible,” he declared.
“What was the hurry in saying that election should be just within 24 hours when we are in the month of July? We are not yet in August. We had the opportunity of doing what is right for the Nigerian electoral commission to copy from us, and for us to raise our heads high among the comity of nations that we have done what is right,” Okutepa stated.
Turning to the judiciary, Okutepa delivered what he described as his central conviction, invoking the late Justice Niki Tobi.
“His Lordship, Honourable Justice Niki Tobi of blessed memory, warned Nigerian politicians not to be mingling with Nigerian judges, and judges not to be mingling with politicians, because impartiality is the attribute of judicial officers. Partiality and moral bankruptcy as a road to attain power are good attributes for politicians,” Okutepa stated.
“So the two professions are opposite. They are like fire and petrol. They should not meet and they ought not to meet. But where the two professions that oppose one another, one representing darkness, one representing light, begin to go to parties and go to night disco, then the possibility of darkness overshadowing the purity and light of justice is very, very possible,” he stated.
“My view therefore is: let judges be judges with their code of ethics of purity and run away from politicians with their code of impurity, and deliver Nigeria from the calamitous end that our democracy may face should injustice continue to permeate the structures of our system,” Okutepa declared.
Okutepa argued that the judiciary retains the power to correct the system if it chooses to.
“If the Nigerian judiciary wants what is correct, it can be done. The Nigerian judiciary put an end to unlawful impeachments of governors. The Supreme Court that made that decision is still the Nigerian Supreme Court. The law is still there. Nobody can remove the Chief Justice of Nigeria on account of the correct things he will do,” he stated.
“Why do we manage those we found to have breached their judicial oath, and suspend them and bring them back? We need to have a judiciary that can look the executive in his face and say, ‘To hell with you, this is what the law says.’ We don’t need a judiciary that puts roadblocks to the attainment of electoral justice and that Nigerian politicians can manipulate,” Okutepa stated.
Asked whether constitutional reform could fix Nigeria’s problems, Okutepa was pessimistic about reform divorced from character.
“There is no amount of reform that can change the kind of things we have in Nigeria except all of us are ready to change our character and our orientation and have a nation where we want things to work. Even if you produce the best of constitutions for this country, the kind of Kenyan constitution you are talking about is going to be applied in abuse,” he stated.
“Check the NBA election. People who know what is wrong and very wrong are defending those wrong things on the basis of the hatred they have for one particular person. Is that not a reflection of the general moral situation in Nigerian society? There is almost total moral breakdown. There is total moral decadence. Everybody wants to cut corners,” Okutepa stated.
He described the absence of remedies: “There are no immediate remedies for evil in this country, and that is why when politicians or even lawyers say ‘go to court,’ nobody is respecting the system, because the system itself has given room for bad people to dominate it.”
“The reform has to start with us. We have to go back to basics, teach moral uprightness. What is wrong is wrong. Nobody should give a baptismal name of right to wrong and begin to cover it in argument because his or her personal partisan interest is involved. Let’s call what is wrong wrong,” he stated.
Okutepa closed on a personal note about his lifelong commitment to the association.
“I do not have any other association that I belong to. Nigerian Bar Association. And so when the association to which I have devoted a considerable proportion of my life, risking my life to attend meetings, that I was brought out on the 22nd of February 2006 to be executed in Indonesia on my way to a meeting, is being destroyed in my very eyes by people who contributed nothing to the growth of the association, it pains me to my bone marrow,” he stated.
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Authored by Ben Ijeoma Adigwe Esq., ACiarb (UK), LL.M, Dip. in Artificial Intelligence, Director at the Delta State Ministry of Justice, Asaba, Nigeria.
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