Aare Olumuyiwa Akinboro, SAN, a candidate in the 2026 presidential election of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), has declared that “there was no election,” petitioning eight top offices of the Bar and two federal security agencies over what he described as a poll marred by bias, procedural breaches and a collapsed voting portal that he insists should never have been allowed to stand.
In a letter dated 27th July, 2026 and titled “A Call for Urgent Intervention and Redress,” Akinboro, a Life Bencher and former NBA General Secretary, addressed the Chairman of the Body of Benchers, HRM Olorogun Albert Akpomudje, CFR, SAN; the General Council of the Bar; the Attorney-General of the Federation, Prince Lateef Fagbemi, SAN; past presidents of the NBA; NBA President Mazi Afam Osigwe, SAN; the Chairman of the Electoral Committee of the NBA (ECNBA), Aham Ejelam, SAN; the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC); and the Department of State Security (DSS), demanding urgent intervention in a crisis he traces back nearly two years.
The trouble, according to the petition, began shortly after Osigwe’s own emergence as NBA president-elect in 2024, when he is said to have visited Akinboro at his home on about four occasions to persuade him into the 2026 race. Akinboro claims he was subsequently introduced to Augustine Alegeh, SAN, who indicated willingness to back his candidature on one condition, that he secure the South-West bloc’s consent to an arrangement rotating the NBA presidency between the South-West and Mid-West whenever the office falls to the Western Zone. Akinboro says he declined to broker such a deal, insisting it was not his place as an aspirant to do so, and that it was from that point his relationship with Alegeh and, by extension, Osigwe soured, with both men allegedly turning “fierce” opponents of his ambition.
What followed, the petition alleges, was a sustained pattern of institutional bias favouring a rival candidate, Mrs Oyinkansola Badejo-Okunsanya, SAN. At the NBA’s 2025 Annual General Conference in Enugu, Akinboro claims association officials distributed the woman’s campaign-branded caps and stickers during the official Health Walk without extending the same platform to other aspirants, while the AGC’s “Friendship Centre” was allegedly handed to her camp free of charge even as he says he paid six months’ rent to the Enugu State Government for his own space. Her campaign materials, he further alleges, dominated the AGC’s “Unbarred Party,” an official NBA social event.
The petition also revisits a 5th February, 2026 National Executive Council meeting in Maiduguri, Borno State, where Osigwe reportedly told members he “cannot be neutral” in the race — a remark captured at the time by the online outlet Legal Nigeria and attached to the petition as evidence, as well as an NBA-SPIDEL event on the 14th of April, 2026 at which the president is said to have urged lawyers to “trust a woman with the leadership of NBA.” Akinboro claims the NBA President went on to personally lobby senior lawyers, including Senior Advocates, to withdraw support for him, and deployed the association’s Women’s Forum, Young Lawyers Forum and various committees as campaign tools for his preferred candidate.
Beyond the allegations of favouritism, the petition raises pointed questions about the machinery built to run the election itself. Akinboro alleges that the ECNBA was handpicked by Osigwe outside due constitutional process, and that its chairman and secretary were subsequently rewarded with appointments to the Body of Benchers. He further claims the committee engaged election technology firms, Mikrodigital Connect as electronic voting service provider and Thanelinc Nigeria Limited as data protection officer, that a background check he commissioned found wanting in experience, track record and, in Mikrodigital’s case, basic corporate compliance, with six years of overdue annual returns filed hurriedly only after its appointment became public. He says candidates and the ECNBA agreed, at a meeting on the 25th of May, 2026, to authenticate voters through National Identity Numbers and phone-based one-time passwords rather than the Supreme Court Enrolment Numbers and email OTPs blamed for compromising past elections, an agreement he says the ECNBA’s own voting guideline quietly abandoned days later.
Court cases filed by aggrieved lawyers eventually drew in the Attorney-General of the Federation, who, the petition recounts, convened a meeting of NBA past presidents that produced a three-man review committee chaired by Chief Wole Olanipekun, CFR, SAN. Its recommendations, new service providers, a postponement to August 2026, an independent electoral oversight committee, and NIN-based voter authentication, were adopted by the AGF but, Akinboro alleges, publicly denounced by Osigwe as an attempted “hijack” of the Bar.
Then came election day itself, which the petition casts as vindication of every warning ignored. Voting, scheduled for midnight on July 18, allegedly could not begin as the portal collapsed; when a handful of lawyers did manage to log in, Akinboro’s name was said to be missing from the presidential ballot altogether, with only Badejo-Okunsanya’s photograph displayed on the interface. The ECNBA blamed a cyberattack and, hours later, migrated the vote to an entirely new web address which Akinboro alleges was never subjected to the prior testing and integrity checks required under the NBA Constitution. The switch, he says, triggered a fresh wave of complaints from lawyers who never received their OTPs, disenfranchising what he describes as the lowest turnout in the history of NBA online election, himself included, as he says he was unable to vote in his own election.
When the count was done, Badejo-Okunsanya was declared winner with 12,317 votes, ahead of Lateef Akangbe, SAN, with 7,934 and Akinboro with 5,855, a combined turnout of just 26,184 votes, or about 31.86 per cent of the 82,172 lawyers eligible to vote. Akinboro’s petition also points to a television interview in which Badejo-Okunsanya herself said she had voted despite her name not appearing on the ECNBA’s released list of voters, a claim he says only deepens, rather than resolves, doubts about the portal’s integrity.
Citing Supreme Court authorities on disenfranchisement and inconclusive elections, Akinboro insists the number of lawyers locked out by the OTP failures was more than enough to have altered the outcome, and on that basis maintains that what took place on 18th and 19th of July cannot properly be called an election at all. He is demanding an independent forensic audit of the entire process by a reputable firm such as KPMG, Deloitte or PwC, a security agency investigation into possible breaches of the Cybercrimes Act and Data Protection Act, publication of the reports of local and international observers said to have monitored the poll, immediate reconstitution of the ECNBA to organise a fresh election, and an urgent meeting of Bar stakeholders to resolve the impasse, warning that he will “explore other legal recourse” should his calls go unheeded.
See the said petition below
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