Lawyers have raised fresh concerns over the handling of personal data in the ongoing 2026 Nigerian Bar Association National Elections, questioning why the NBA and the Electoral Committee of the Nigerian Bar Association have not issued a full technical update on the alleged cyberattack that delayed the commencement of voting.
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The concerns followed the ECNBA’s notice that the election, initially scheduled to commence at 12:00 a.m. WAT on Saturday, July 18, 2026, could not begin as planned because the e-voting platform was allegedly subjected to a deliberate, coordinated and sustained cyberattack by external actors.
Although the Committee later announced that voting would commence at 7:35 a.m. WAT after migrating the portal to a new domain, lawyers are asking whether the ECNBA’s notices sufficiently addressed the key issues arising from an alleged cyberattack on a platform holding the personal data of over 82,000 lawyers.
Some lawyers said the ECNBA ought to have gone beyond a general apology and announcement of a new voting link by providing a detailed incident timeline, including when the alleged attack was detected, the type of attack, whether the attack was attempted or successful, whether any voter database was accessed, and whether any OTP records, phone numbers, email addresses, SCN numbers or authentication logs were exposed.
They also questioned whether the alleged incident was reported to the Nigeria Data Protection Commission and whether affected lawyers were entitled to a clearer data protection notice.
Under the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023, a data controller of major importance is required to designate a Data Protection Officer with expert knowledge of data protection law and practice, who may be an employee or engaged by service contract, and who acts as contact point with the Commission on data processing issues.
The Act also requires data controllers and processors to implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure the security, integrity and confidentiality of personal data. It further provides that where a breach is likely to affect the rights and freedoms of individuals, the data controller must notify the Commission within 72 hours of becoming aware of the breach. Where the breach is likely to result in high risk to data subjects, the controller must communicate it to affected persons in plain and clear language, including measures they may take to reduce possible harm.
Lawyers are therefore asking the NBA and ECNBA to identify the Data Protection Officer or data protection desk responsible for the election platform, as well as the DPO or data protection contact of the Election Voting Service Provider.
They also want the ECNBA to clarify whether a Data Protection Impact Assessment was conducted before deploying the voting platform, whether a data processing agreement exists between the NBA/ECNBA and the service provider, and whether an independent cybersecurity audit was conducted before voting was allowed to resume.
The concerns were heightened by complaints from lawyers who said they either did not receive OTPs, received OTPs that could not be used, or encountered error messages such as “The authentication session is invalid. Please request a new OTP.”
Others questioned why some voters who had already cast their votes could still access the platform again after receiving another OTP, asking whether the system had database-level safeguards preventing double voting or backend manipulation.
The ECNBA had earlier provided a live results dashboard showing that as of 3:11:48 p.m. WAT, 18,662 voters had voted out of 82,164 registered voters, representing 22.71 per cent turnout. This meant 63,502 voters, or 77.29 per cent, had yet to vote at the time of the update.
The dashboard also showed Oyinkansola Badejo-Okusanya, SAN, leading the presidential race with 8,311 votes, representing 44.66 per cent of votes cast for the office of President, followed by Lateef Omoyemi Akangbe, SAN, with 5,854 votes, and Aare Olumuyiwa Akinboro, SAN, with 4,444 votes.
Earlier, Akangbe had written an emergency protest letter to the ECNBA at 2:15 a.m. WAT, alleging portal collapse, breach of the SMS-only OTP assurance, and defects in the presidential ballot interface. He demanded immediate suspension of the election, preservation of logs and an independent technical audit of the platform.
Another candidate, Arinze Celestine Chukwu, Esq., contesting for the General Council of the Bar, Eastern Zone, also protested that his name was omitted from the ballot from 7:35 a.m., when voting commenced, until about 9:50 a.m., when it was allegedly restored without his photograph. He claimed that more than 7,000 voters had already voted before the correction and demanded a fresh election for the GCB Eastern Zone.
Lawyers say these complaints make it more urgent for the NBA and ECNBA to provide a full technical and data protection update, rather than relying only on general notices.
They are asking the Committee to disclose whether the voter database was isolated and audited after the alleged cyberattack, whether access logs were preserved, whether the OTP delivery system was affected, whether any unauthorised backend access occurred, who certified the migrated domain as secure, and whether the live dashboard figures are fully auditable.
TheNigeriaLawyer could not independently confirm that lawyers’ data had been compromised or that there was backend manipulation. However, the combination of the alleged cyberattack, portal migration, OTP failures, ballot complaints and limited public technical disclosure has continued to raise concern among lawyers over data security and the integrity of the election process.
As of the time of this report, the ECNBA had not issued a detailed forensic report or named any data protection officer publicly responsible for handling lawyers’ data in relation to the election.
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