NBA Elections: NBA Lagos Branch Chair, Yemi Akangbe Refutes Secretary’s Allegations Of Using Office For Partisan Purpose, Says Compiled Voters List Not Made In Secrecy

The Chairman of the Nigerian Bar Association, Lagos Branch, Mr. Lateef Omoyemi Akangbe, has refuted the allegations made by the Branch Secretary, Mr. Moshood Abiola, Esq., where he alleged that he was using his office for partisan purposes ahead of the forthcoming election.

However, Mr. Lateef has in a mail sent to the members of the Branch which was made available to TheNigeriaLawyer revealed that contrary to the allegations, the compiled voters list of the Branch was not complied in secrecy as alleged by the Secretary.

It would be recalled that the Branch Secretary had earlier on written to the NBA President, Learned Silks, Past Chairmen and leaders of the NBA Lagos Branch in a mail titled:

“RE: NBA 2020 Elections: Compromised Voters list from the Premier Branch”, where he alleged that the Chairman, Mr Yemi Akangbe, “has gone about the compilation of the list of voters for the NBA Lagos Branch in a manner that is completely lacking in transparency and suggestive of manipulation.”

In reaction thereto, the Chairman has in another mail replied to all the allegations and has decided to set the record straight.

The mail reads:

Dear Respected Seniors and Colleagues,

I hope this email finds you all well.

I received an email at 10.36am on 18th of June, 2020 from the Secretary of the Branch (Mr Moshood Abiola) where he made spurious allegations and cast grave aspersions on the integrity of the Voters List sent to the ECNBA by me.

Due to my penchant for due process, I will give a detailed illustration of the entire process of compilation below and support same with screen shots of correspondence on the Whatsapp platform of the EXCO of the Branch, as well as various Official Statements issued by myself with regard to the process of the compilation, so as to leave everyone with no difficulty in coming to the conclusion that these allegations made by the Branch Secretary in the above mentioned email are baseless and unworthy of your consideration.

The Task Assigned by the ECNBA

By an email sent by the ECNBA to all the Chairmen of the 126 Branches of the NBA on the 5th of May 2020, the ECNBA called on all Branch Chairmen to provide a list of their Branch Members that had paid their Bar Practising Fee (BPF) and Branch Dues (BD) on or before the 31st of March, 2020 and to be supplied to the Committee by the 9th day of May, 2020. In addition, the Chairmen were also requested to supply their Bank Statements from the 1st of January to the 31st of March, 2020 in order, to enable the Committee scrutinize and verify the respective Lists sent by the Branch Chairmen.

Upon receipt of the email referred to in 1 above, I immediately responded on the same day, explaining the extenuating circumstances that the Branch found itself as a result of the lockdown occasioned by the Covid 19 Pandemic, in Lagos State. As a matter of fact, I informed the ECNBA of the fact that the lockdown was eased in Lagos, 4 days before the deadline and would be impossible for us to meet the deadline with all the will in the World, also taking into account, the fact that as at that date, offices were only permitted to operate for a shorter number of hours.

It is instructive to note however that our administration inherited a Branch without an official database of Members on its WEBSITE and as part of my administration’s desire to leave the Branch better than we met it, I designed a data form in January 2020 for the Secretariat staff, in order for them to record the details of Members, whenever they bring their Tellers to the Branch in exchange for the receipt for the payment of their BPF and BD, as a step towards our data gathering. Unfortunately, this process was truncated by the lockdown that commenced in Lagos State sometime in the March March, 2020. Thus, a considerable number of Members, were unable to enter their details on the data form.
Sources of Data

Upon partial resumption on the 5th of May, 2020, the process of compilation began in earnest and we used two (2) sources for compiling the voters list. One was from the data form that we had designed for members’ details, which were being uploaded on the system manually by the staff of the Secretariat. As at the time they commenced the process, they had over 6,000 names to upload on the system. The other source of data was to call on Members (by a Communique issued on the 8th of May, 2020 and disseminated via whatsapp and emails) who could not bring their bank tellers before the lockdown, to either scan their evidence of payment to a designated email address, in which I directed Members of the EXCO to retrieve or provide us with the date of payment and the bank in which the money was paid into, so that the Treasurer can trace their names from our Bank statements and in turn include their names in the voters list being prepared. Some Members obliged their details and I directed members of the EXCO to coordinate the process, contrary to the assertions made by the Secretary that the Voters List was compiled in secrecy and without the involvement of the EXCO. Those were the 2 sources of our data and the primary data are still in tact and verifiable.
Compilation Process.

With the best of endeavours, the Secretariat staff were not able to meet the deadline of the 9th of May,2020 (set by the ECNBA) rather they were only able to churn out 1,900 names with contact details out of a List of 6,100 Members that were available as at that date. Accordingly the list was forwarded to the ECNBA on the 26th of May, 2020. Furthermore, by an email of the 27th of May 2020, I supplied the Bank Statements of the Branch, for the period between the 1st of January to 31st of March, 2020 pursuant to the request for same by the ECNBA.

The ECNBA on the 30th of May 2020 released a Provisional List of Voters via ECNBA 005, in order for Members to verify their names and/or correct their details. The Committee also set out a format to be adopted in sending the corrected voters list back to it, The format required the Branch to indicate whether the name of an eligible voter has been omitted or details were incorrectly stated, amongst others and a deadline of 6th of June, 2020 was set as the deadline for this exercise.

To my surprise, the Provisional List sent by the ECNBA showed that the 1,900 containing details of members was fraught with typographical errors or mistakes. Interestingly, even the details of the National President, that of the Branch Secretary and myself, amongst many others that were sent to the ECNBA were laden with errors. These were simply due to the ineptitude of the Secretariat staff responsible for feeding the data on the system. At that point, it became clear to me that the Secretariat Staff lacked the capacity to carry out this task accurately and timeously.

The Treasurer of the Branch suggested that perhaps we outsource this task to IT consultants, given the shortness of time and the enormity of the task. Accordingly, I contacted an IT company that was being considered for automating the website of the Branch, to upload the details of over 4,000 members, yet to be entered on the system and correct the errors in the earlier list, as an alternative to the Secretariat staff doing same.

Contrary to the assertion made by the Secretary, that the Exco knew nothing about the decision to hire an IT company, screen shot of correspondence between Exco at various times on the decision to outsource and regular updates are attached herewith. As a matter of fact, EXCO members were not only notified of this but they approved same and were grateful for the intervention.
Simultaneously, I set up two teams (team A & B, consisting of EXCO members only) headed by the Vice Chair and the Secretary respectively and their respective mandates were to collate a List of incorrect details from the Provisional List released by the ECNBA on the 30th of May, 2020 and to call on members (via an official statement issued by me on the 31st of May, 2020) whose names were omitted to supply their details on or before the 3rd of June, 2020, in order to meet the 6th of June, 2020 deadline, set by the ECNBA. The idea behind this was for the teams to compile these Lists and merge same with the ones being done by the IT Company.

Teams A & B were not able to conclude their tasks until after the 6th of June, 2020 deadline due to the volume the emails and the monotonous process of collation and only submitted their List to me around the 8th of June, 2020 and it was immediately forwarded to the IT company in order to merge with the ones with them. However, when Team B sent in their list, it turned out that it was not in compliance with the format requested by the ECNBA, therefore it had to be reworked. The Secretary Mr Moshood Abiola, advised me to instruct one of the Secretariat staff, Alex Goungo to re-do the list instead of the IT Company and I yielded to his advice.

Being mindful of the fact that we were out of time, I tried on several occasions to get an extension from the ECNBA but I was told that their task was time bound and they were not going to wait for us but I was advised by the ECNBA to send whatever List was ready at the time. Being unable to obtain an extension, a Provisional List was sent to the ECNBA on the 12th of June, 2020 with a note that Final List will follow shortly and by a reply email from the ECNBA, I was informed that “the deadline for submission of List had expired”.
The final process of correction was not concluded by Alex Goungo until about 11pm on the 17th of June, 2020. In view of the fact that the ECNBA had refused to extend time for even the earlier submission, I was under enormous pressure to submit the List, without any further delay. Upon sending the FINAL List, I immediately forwarded same to the ECNBA at 6.30am on the 18th of June, 2020. I received a reply email from the ECNBA, “informing me that the deadline for submission had expired a week ago”.

With regard to the EXCO members, everyone knew we were struggling with time and I made it abundantly clear that the List will be available for scrutiny at the end of the exercise, but it was important for us to turn it in, without further delay. This is important, when one considers the fact that the ECNBA would require a reasonable period of time to subject the List to scrutiny, before it is admitted to the FINAL VOTERS LIST, to be published at least 28 days before the election, which ought to be the 26th of June, 2020, meanwhile, the Branch was still struggling as at the 17th of June, 2020 to submit its Final List. Therefore, I had no other choice but to send it off as soon it was ready on the 18th of June, 2020.

On The Allegation of Excluding Olaniwun Ajayi LP/ 1 Other Law firm

On the 10th June, 2020 (4 days after the 6th of June, 2020 deadline set by the ECNBA) I was informed by the Secretariat that a staff of Olaniwun Ajayi LP (OALP) brought a list of 100 lawyers to be included in the Voters List, as they had paid their BPF and BD since the 23rd of March, 2020 (3 days prior to the lockdown) but never came to the Branch to be issued receipts, until that day. Prior to the said day, I had issued statements on communiques dated 8th of May, 2020, and 31st of May, 2020 (widely circulated via whatsapp and emails to members) calling on members of the Branch to scan their evidence of payment to us in the event they could not come to the Branch or to inform us of the date of payment as well as the bank their dues were paid into, in order to assist us track their payments and include their names in the voters list. More importantly is the fact that we had stopped receiving new names, because new names were coming by the day and there had to be a cut-off point, otherwise, the process would become a bottomless pit. That notwithstanding, I instructed Secretariat to accept their names but to put them on the queue and continue with the ones that were earlier in time. Upon the conclusion of the entire process, I instructed the Secretariat to then include the OALP List and the other firm, as well as some other emails that came in late, in a bid to ensure that no Member is disenfranchised for a technical reason. Consequently, the names supplied by these firms were all included in the Final List that was sent to the ENBA at 6.30am on the 18th of June, 2020.

My Involvement In The Process

In light of the fact that the ECNBA had specifically requested that I and other chairmen of all Branches supply the list as evident in all the thread of emails on the subject and coupled with the mandate given to me by an overwhelming majority of our Members as well as the Bye Laws of the Branch, to take all necessary steps considered to be in the best interest of the Branch, I knew that I had the RESPONSIBILITY to superintend the entire process, in order to ensure that it is not compromised nor abused. The buck stops at my table, after all, as the Chairman of the Branch.

Having said that, given my observations and the antecedents of the Branch Secretary, Mr Moshood Abiola, I was not in any doubt in my mind about his partisanship in favour of a particular candidate in the Presidential election. This fact is apparent to all Lawyers on numerous Whatsapp platforms within the Branch (despite my plea to EXCO Members to desist from declaring an open support for any of the candidate within the Branch) which left me with very little confidence in releasing vital electoral data to him, in order to guarantee the sanctity of the process and the sensitive nature of the data at my disposal. On several occasions, he requested that I provide him with the contact details of members on the voters list and I refused to honour the request. The very first list that was sent to the ECNBA with 1,900 contact details was handed over to him, due to the enormous pressure he asserted on me. On many occasions, he made threats to the Secretariat staff to release the details on the voters list to him, this can be substantiated by the SMS he sent to Alex Goungo’s phone, which were forwarded to me by Alex. As a matter of fact, what he termed as “exclusion from the process” was my refusal to hand over the voters list together with the contact details of members to him. I took the decision not to hand it over to him, in line with my mandate to do all that I consider to be in best interests of the Branch, considering that we had many Members of the Branch vying for same position in the forthcoming election.

Genuineness of the Voters List

At all times, I have always maintained that the Voters List compiled would be opened to scrutiny at any level and I still maintain that fact. At no time, did I include any name or exclude any. All names were sent through the appropriate emails created for that purpose. The Personal Assistants to Chief Wole Olanipekun, SAN (one Debo Oladunni, Esq) and the one for our President Mr Paul Usoro, SAN (Mr Ayi Ekpeyong, Esq) amongst many others, are living witnesses to the fact that when they informed me that their principals names were omitted from the provisional list or their details appeared incorrectly, rather than take those details from them, I directed them to the official statement that I issued, where the procedure for correction was laid out.
I, Lateef Omoyemi Akangbe, call on the ECNBA to critically scrutinize the Lagos Branch List, using the Bank Statements sent I had earlier sent to it, including any other means available to it, in order to confirm the genuineness of the List forwarded by me.

In addition to that, I still intend to place the names (excluding the contact details of members) before the EXCO of the Branch (via a Meeting to be held on Saturday the 20th of June, 2020) in order to scrutinize and bring any anomalies found to the attention of all appropriate authorities. Having said that, I am willing to equally set up an ad hoc committee made up of respected Members of the Branch to also scrutinize the list, in order to ascertain the genuineness of same.

It is indeed very embarrassing and disgraceful to have to defend a process that was done in utmost good faith and sincerity, merely because I refused to yield to the dictate of some external forces, but as it often said, uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

I hope I have left everyone in no doubt as to the integrity of the List. I may not cherish many things, but my name and reputation mean everything to me.

Lateef Omoyemi Akangbe, FCIArb.