Oyinkansola Badejo-Okusanya is leading the race to become the next president of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) after the association’s election ended on Saturday.
Results displayed on the live dashboard of the electoral committee of the NBA (ECNBA) showed that Badejo-Okusanya had secured 12,317 votes, accounting for 47.18 percent of ballots cast.
Lateef Akangbe, her closest challenger, received 7,934 votes, representing 30.39 percent, while Olumuyiwa Akinboro polled 5,855 votes, which amounted to 22.43 percent.
The ECNBA dashboard showed that 26,184 votes were recorded from 82,172 registered voters, translating to a 31.86 percent participation rate.
The electronic voting exercise began at 7:35 am on Saturday and was scheduled to end 24 hours later, although the electoral committee had yet to formally announce the winner.
If declared victorious, Badejo-Okusanya will become the second woman to occupy the NBA presidency since the association was established.
The election had been preceded by disagreements over the process, including legal challenges, calls for a postponement and debates over selecting a consensus candidate for the position.
Shortly after voting commenced, concerns were raised over alleged technical difficulties affecting the electronic voting platform.
Akangbe, a former chairman of the NBA Lagos branch, petitioned the ECNBA and requested that the election be suspended over what he described as irregularities with the voting process.
He alleged that the voting portal experienced failures, voters received one-time passwords through email instead of SMS as stated in the committee’s revised guidelines, and that the presidential ballot showed only one candidate’s photograph.
In his protest letter, Akangbe questioned the credibility of the process, stating, “A flawed, rushed election carried out today under these chaotic conditions cannot yield a credible result.”
“Whoever is declared the winner of an election conducted on a collapsed portal, with breached authentication, and on a visually defective ballot, will not lead the Bar with the confidence of the profession,” he added.
