Presidential candidate in the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) election, Lateef Omoyemi Akangbe, SAN, has called for the immediate suspension and postponement of the 2026 NBA National Elections, citing what he described as a “catastrophic structural and technical collapse” of the electronic voting process.
In an emergency protest addressed to the Electoral Committee of the Nigerian Bar Association (ECNBA) in the early hours of Saturday, Akangbe argued that the integrity of the election had been fundamentally compromised following the failure of the e-voting platform shortly after voting was scheduled to commence at 12:00 a.m.
The senior advocate stated that more than two hours after the scheduled commencement of voting, the election portal remained inaccessible to the overwhelming majority of the approximately 82,000 accredited voters, with users reportedly encountering repeated authentication failures, error messages and timeouts.
According to him, the collapse of the platform raises serious concerns about the integrity of the electoral database and the possibility of unauthorised manipulation of votes while the system remained inaccessible to voters.
Akangbe questioned how the ECNBA intended to distinguish between legitimate votes allegedly cast before the system failure and any votes that could have been inserted through backend access during the period of disruption.
He argued that any proposal to simply restart the election would be insufficient to restore confidence in the process, insisting that once the system failed, the integrity of the database had already been compromised.
The presidential candidate also accused the electoral committee of breaching its own revised voting guidelines on voter authentication.
He noted that the ECNBA had announced less than 24 hours earlier that One-Time Passwords (OTPs) for voter authentication would be sent exclusively through registered mobile telephone numbers via SMS, replacing the previous email-based system because of concerns about its vulnerability to manipulation.
However, Akangbe alleged that voters across the country were still receiving authentication codes through email, contrary to the committee’s published guidelines.
According to him, the change from email authentication to SMS authentication was introduced specifically to prevent the type of electoral manipulation that had characterised previous NBA elections.
He argued that the continued use of email-based OTPs undermined the very security safeguards introduced by the ECNBA and called into question the legitimacy of every vote authenticated through that process.
Akangbe further alleged that the presidential ballot itself was defective, claiming that only one of the three presidential candidates had his photograph displayed on the electronic ballot while the photographs of the remaining candidates, including his own, were either missing or failed to render.
He described the omission as a serious electoral defect capable of conferring an unfair visual advantage on one candidate over others, arguing that in an electronic election, the ballot interface constitutes the equivalent of the ballot paper and must remain neutral and identical for all contestants.
He questioned how such an error escaped the mock voting exercise and security audits reportedly conducted before the election.
In view of the alleged failures, Akangbe demanded the immediate suspension of the election and called on the ECNBA to take the voting portal offline pending a comprehensive review.
He also requested that all voting records, authentication logs, OTP delivery records and system access logs generated from the commencement of voting until suspension be preserved for an independent forensic audit.
The senior advocate further urged the committee to appoint an independent third-party technology firm to conduct a comprehensive audit of the election platform, database, authentication system and ballot interface before any resumption of voting.
He also demanded that the ECNBA provide a detailed written explanation to members on how a platform that had undergone testing and security certification failed almost immediately after deployment.
Akangbe maintained that the election should be postponed to a later date within the tenure of the current NBA administration to allow sufficient time to rectify the identified deficiencies and restore confidence in the electoral process.
According to him, proceeding with the election under the prevailing circumstances would produce a result that would lack credibility and inevitably generate further disputes and litigation.
He warned that any winner emerging from what he described as a compromised process would inherit a legitimacy crisis capable of undermining both the office and the Nigerian Bar Association.
The letter was copied to the NBA President, the General Secretary, all presidential candidates, the Chairman of the Body of Benchers, past NBA Presidents and the Attorney-General of the Federation.