A fresh controversy has deepened around the appointment of Mikrodigital Connect as the electronic voting service provider for the 2026 Nigerian Bar Association elections, following revelations that the company allegedly regularised six years of outstanding annual returns with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) only after media scrutiny exposed its inactive status on the CAC portal, that the company’s CEO responded with “I don’t understand” when confronted with the non-compliance, and that the company has no functioning website, raising fundamental questions about whether the Electoral Committee of the Nigerian Bar Association (ECNBA) conducted even the most basic due diligence before entrusting the company with one of the most sensitive assignments in the NBA’s electoral process.
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The overnight rush to clear six years of CAC arrears, far from resolving the controversy, has intensified it. The central question is no longer whether Mikrodigital Connect is currently active on the CAC portal. It is whether the company was compliant when the ECNBA selected it, whether the ECNBA knew about the non-compliance and proceeded regardless, who prompted or advised the company to clear the arrears overnight after the issue became public, and whether a firm that could not maintain basic corporate compliance for six consecutive years should be trusted to manage an electronic voting system for tens of thousands of Nigerian lawyers.
An investigation by City Lawyer shows that Mikrodigital Connect commenced payment of its CAC annual return arrears at approximately 10:06 PM on the night following the publication of TheNigeriaLawyer’s report revealing the company’s inactive status. The company concluded the payments by 12:30 PM the following day.
A screenshot of the payment details obtained from the CAC website shows the following timeline: the 2020 annual return was paid at 10:06 PM on the first night; the annual returns for 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025 were paid between 11:50 AM and 12:30 PM the following day.
The investigation further shows that the company was still displaying an “Inactive” status on the CAC portal as late as 12:11 PM on the day the payments were completed, meaning the status change from “Inactive” to “Active” occurred after the final payment was processed.
The speed of the remediation is itself telling. A company that had failed to file annual returns for six consecutive years from 2020 to 2025 suddenly cleared all arrears within approximately 14 hours of the non-compliance being made public. This does not suggest a company that was unaware of its filing obligations or that had been planning to regularise its status in the ordinary course of business. It suggests a company that was prompted by external pressure, whether from the media report, from the ECNBA, or from other interested parties, to urgently address a corporate governance failure that had persisted for half a decade.
When City Lawyer highlighted the non-compliance to the Chief Executive of Mikrodigital Connect, Mr Shamsuddeen Haruna, his initial response raised more questions than it answered.
“I was called on it but have you checked yourself?” Haruna responded, before adding, in what appeared to be feigned ignorance of the non-compliance: “I don’t understand?”
He then forwarded a screenshot of the entity’s CAC dashboard showing an “Active” status, the status that had only been achieved after the overnight payment of six years of arrears.
The response is problematic for several reasons. The CEO’s claim that he did not understand the issue suggests either that he was genuinely unaware that his company had not filed annual returns for six years, which would raise serious concerns about his management of the entity, or that he was being evasive with a journalist asking legitimate questions about his company’s corporate governance, which raises different but equally serious concerns about transparency.
His reference to having been “called on it” also raises the critical question: who called him? If someone alerted the CEO to the CAC issue after the media report, the identity of that person or entity is relevant to understanding the dynamics behind the company’s overnight scramble to regularise its status. Was it the ECNBA? Was it an ECNBA member? Was it a third party with an interest in the company retaining the NBA election contract? The answer matters because it goes to the question of who is pushing this firm and why.
The investigation revealed an additional red flag that compounds the CAC issue: Mikrodigital Connect appears to have no functioning website or meaningful online presence.
Aside from a Facebook page that was last updated on July 14, 2022, nearly four years ago, there is no indication that the entity has any other active online presence. For a company that describes itself as “an indigenous ICT driven company with diverse business interests supported by a specialised team of experts locally and globally in all the ICT sectors,” the absence of a functioning website is a glaring contradiction.
When asked whether the company has a website, Haruna provided an explanation that did little to inspire confidence: “We are currently upgrading all our systems, by God’s grace later today or tomorrow it will be up. Our partners suggested we take the site down and modify it. Both our websites.”
When asked to provide the web addresses, he responded: “As soon as it’s up, we will share with you.”
The claim that the company’s websites were “taken down” for upgrading at precisely the moment media scrutiny intensified is difficult to accept at face value. A company engaged to build and manage a secure, end-to-end encrypted, multi-factor authenticated electronic voting system for the Nigerian Bar Association should, at minimum, be able to maintain its own corporate website. If Mikrodigital Connect cannot keep its own website operational, the question of whether it can reliably operate a voting platform for tens of thousands of lawyers on election day becomes not merely theoretical but urgent.
The overnight regularisation of Mikrodigital Connect’s CAC status does not resolve the due diligence controversy. It deepens it. The ECNBA must now answer three fundamental questions.
First, did the ECNBA know that Mikrodigital Connect was inactive on CAC when it appointed the firm as the e-voting provider? If the ECNBA conducted a basic CAC check as part of its vendor selection process, the inactive status would have been immediately visible. If the ECNBA knew about the inactive status and proceeded to appoint the company regardless, it made a deliberate decision to engage a non-compliant entity for a sensitive assignment, which raises questions about the committee’s standards and judgment.
Second, if the ECNBA did not know about the inactive status, what level of corporate due diligence was actually conducted before appointing a company to manage the NBA’s electronic voting system? A CAC status check is the most basic corporate verification step available in Nigeria. It is free or costs a nominal fee, takes minutes to complete, and is accessible to anyone through the publicly available CAC portal. If the ECNBA did not perform even this elementary check before awarding one of its most important contracts, the procurement process that produced the appointment is fundamentally compromised.
Third, who prompted or advised Mikrodigital Connect to clear six years of CAC arrears overnight after the issue became public? The speed of the remediation suggests that someone with knowledge of the media report and the ability to contact the company’s CEO acted quickly to attempt damage control. Whether that person was an ECNBA official, a member of the committee, or a third party with an interest in the contract is a question that goes to the integrity of the entire procurement process.
It must be stated clearly: the fact that Mikrodigital Connect has now paid its CAC arrears and achieved “Active” status does not erase the red flag. It strengthens it.
A company that failed to comply with basic corporate filing obligations for six consecutive years, from 2020 to 2025, demonstrated a pattern of corporate governance neglect that is directly relevant to its fitness to handle a sensitive assignment like managing an electronic voting platform. Annual returns are the most elementary corporate compliance requirement under the Companies and Allied Matters Act (CAMA) 2020. Section 425(1) requires every registered entity to file annual returns not later than June 30 of each year. The fact that Mikrodigital Connect failed to do so for six years suggests either a disregard for legal obligations, a lack of corporate governance infrastructure, or both.
The CAC itself has treated non-compliance with annual return filing as a serious matter. Last year, the CAC delisted 400,000 entities due to inactive or non-compliant status. Speaking on the exercise, CAC Registrar-General Hussaini Magaji stated that the move was meant to safeguard the integrity of the corporate register. Under Section 692(3) of CAMA 2020, the CAC is empowered to delist an entity from the corporate registry if it fails to file annual returns for a consecutive period of 10 years. Mikrodigital Connect, with six years of non-compliance, was more than halfway to the delisting threshold.
A company that could not maintain its own CAC compliance, could not keep its own website operational, and whose CEO responded to questions about non-compliance with “I don’t understand” is now responsible for the digital infrastructure that will determine how the next generation of NBA leaders is elected. That is a red flag of the highest order.
The cumulative weight of the evidence now available demands a serious conversation about whether Mikrodigital Connect should remain as the ECNBA’s e-voting provider.
The company was CAC-inactive for six years. It has no functioning website as of the time of this report. Its CEO could not immediately explain the non-compliance when confronted by journalists. Its overnight payment of arrears suggests reactive damage control rather than proactive corporate governance. Its Facebook page has not been updated since July 2022. And the company is registered as a business name, not a limited liability company, meaning it operates with a lower tier of corporate structure and accountability than would typically be expected for a contract of this magnitude and sensitivity.
Against this backdrop, the question is whether the ECNBA, as the body entrusted by the NBA Constitution with the conduct of credible elections, can justify retaining a provider that has demonstrated this level of corporate governance failure. The answer, based on the available evidence, is that the ECNBA should seriously consider replacing Mikrodigital Connect with one of the other shortlisted companies whose corporate status, online presence, and governance track record can withstand scrutiny.
The NBA election is scheduled for July 20, 2026. There is still time to make a change. But every day that passes without the ECNBA addressing these concerns is a day in which public confidence in the integrity of the election’s digital infrastructure continues to erode.
Beyond the due diligence question, there is a deeper question that the legal community is asking: who is behind Mikrodigital Connect’s appointment, and why is the company being retained despite the mounting evidence of corporate governance failure?
The overnight payment of six years of CAC arrears suggests that someone with influence and urgency intervened to save the company’s appointment after media exposure threatened to derail it. The CEO’s reference to having been “called on it” confirms that external communication occurred. But the identity of the caller and the nature of the conversation remain undisclosed.
In any transparent procurement process, the selection of a vendor for a sensitive contract should be based on verifiable criteria including corporate compliance, technical capacity, financial stability, and track record. If a vendor is being retained despite failing to meet basic corporate compliance standards, the inference is that factors other than merit are driving the decision.
The ECNBA owes the NBA membership a clear and public explanation of how Mikrodigital Connect was selected, what due diligence was conducted, whether the inactive CAC status was discovered during the selection process, and why the company should be retained in light of the revelations that have emerged.
Neither the ECNBA Chairman Aham Ejelam, SAN, the ECNBA Secretary Ibrahim Aliyu Nassarawa, Esq., nor any representative of the committee has publicly responded to the due diligence questions raised by the original report or the subsequent revelations about the overnight CAC regularisation.
The silence is itself a concern. The ECNBA is responsible for conducting an election that commands the confidence of the entire NBA membership. When serious questions are raised about the corporate governance status of the company entrusted with the election’s digital infrastructure, silence is not an adequate institutional response.
The NBA membership, the candidates contesting the July 20 election, and the broader legal community deserve answers. The questions are straightforward: did you check, did you know, and if not, why not? And given what is now known, will you act?
The election is 52 days away. The clock is ticking.
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