Badejo-Okusanya Leads as Only Female Candidate in NBA Presidential Election

Oyinkansola Badejo-Okusanya, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) and the only woman running for president in the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) election, has taken an early lead.

As of 4:15 p.m. on Saturday, Mrs Badejo-Okusanya had received 9,053 votes, making up 45.18 percent of the total votes cast, according to a check on the live election results portal.

Her nearest rival, Lateef Omoyemi Akangbe, also a SAN, had 6,253 votes, which is 31.27 percent. Olumuyiwa Akinboro, another SAN, followed with 4,709 votes, or 23.54 percent.

The live results page showed that by about 4:14 p.m. on Saturday, 20,035 voters had cast their votes. This number represents 24.38 percent of the 82,164 registered voters.

The Electoral Committee of the Nigerian Bar Association (ECNBA) had not announced the final results by the time this report was written, as voting was still ongoing.

The early lead came after several controversies clouded the election before voting started on Saturday.

The electronic voting is set to continue for 24 hours from when it began. Although it was supposed to start at 12 a.m. West African Time on Saturday, voting actually began at 7:35 a.m.

This means voting will now go on until 7:35 a.m. on Sunday. After that, the final results can be counted.

Voters are also selecting candidates for other national positions in this ongoing election. These positions include First Vice President, Second Vice President, Third Vice President, General Secretary, Assistant General Secretary, Welfare Secretary, and Assistant Welfare Secretary.

Other roles include Treasurer, Publicity Secretary, Assistant Publicity Secretary, and representatives from the Eastern Zone, Western Zone, and Northern Zone.

The ECNBA explained that the delay was due to a “deliberate, coordinated and sustained cyberattack” aimed at disrupting the election. The committee apologised to members and delayed voting until 7:35 a.m.

They said their cybersecurity team and the Election Voting Service Provider were working to protect the system from the attack and restore the voting platform. They also assured that no votes were counted while the system was down and told lawyers to wait for more instructions before trying to access the voting portal.

The disruption led some lawyers, including Mr Akangbe, to call for an immediate halt to the election. In a letter to the ECNBA, Mr Akangbe called the situation a “catastrophic structural and technical collapse” of the election process, just hours after voting began.

He claimed that most of the more than 82,000 accredited voters could not access the voting portal, facing issues like authentication failures and error messages.

Mr Akangbe also raised concerns about reports suggesting that votes cast before the outage could be cancelled if the process restarted. He argued that this could harm the election's credibility.

He further claimed that the ECNBA broke its own electronic voting rules by sending one-time passwords (OTPs) through email instead of SMS, going against what was promised to members less than 24 hours before the election.

This change, he said, affected the election’s authentication process. Mr Akangbe also mentioned that the electronic ballot showed the photo of only one of the three approved presidential candidates while the other two candidates, including his, were missing or did not display.

He urged the ECNBA to pause the election, save all electronic voting records, conduct an independent forensic audit of the platform, and delay the election until these issues were fixed.

This controversy arose two days after the NBA stated the election would go on as planned despite the detention of the managing director of its election service provider by the State Security Service (SSS).

The NBA’s National Executive Council condemned the detention and demanded the official's immediate release, insisting there was no reason to postpone the election. The NBA later confirmed that the official was released before voting day.