JUST IN: NBA PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE DEMANDS SUSPENSION OF 2026 ELECTIONS OVER PORTAL FAILURE
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By ‘Sefiu Ajape
A presidential candidate in the 2026 Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) National Elections, Lateef Omoyemi Akangbe (SAN), has formally demanded the immediate suspension and postponement of the electoral process, citing what he described as a “catastrophic structural and technical collapse” of the e-voting system.
In an emergency protest letter addressed to the Electoral Committee of the Nigerian Bar Association (ECNBA) at 2:15 a.m. WAT on Saturday, Akangbe said the election, scheduled to commence at 12:00 a.m., had become incapable of producing a credible outcome.
He wrote, “One hundred and twenty minutes into the process, the election has suffered a catastrophic structural and technical collapse that renders its continuation, in any form, indefensible.”
Akangbe listed several grounds for his demand, including the collapse of the voting portal, alleged breaches of the ECNBA’s revised voting guidelines, and what he described as defects in the presidential ballot interface.
On the alleged portal failure, he claimed that the platform was inaccessible to the vast majority of the approximately 82,000 accredited voters.
According to him, “For all practical purposes, the election has not commenced. The portal has collapsed.”
The senior advocate also questioned reports that some votes had already been cast despite the platform being inaccessible to most voters.
He said, “If the portal is inaccessible to the general membership, how were any votes cast at all? Who had access to the platform during a window in which the public could not enter?”
Akangbe argued that any proposal to restart the voting process after cancelling earlier votes could not restore confidence in the integrity of the election.
“A portal that collapses within the first two hours of a national election and then proposes to ‘restart’ is not a portal that can be trusted to deliver a credible result at any point thereafter,” he stated.
He also accused the ECNBA of violating its own revised electronic voting guidelines by allegedly delivering One-Time Passwords (OTPs) through email instead of SMS.
According to him, the committee had, less than 24 hours earlier, announced that OTPs would be delivered “strictly via SMS to registered mobile number” to address concerns over manipulation associated with email-based authentication.
He wrote, “This is not a minor technical glitch. This is a complete and bad-faith breach of the security architecture that the ECNBA itself published.”
Akangbe further alleged that the live presidential ballot interface displayed only one candidate’s photograph while omitting those of the remaining presidential candidates.
He described the situation as “a visual disenfranchisement,” arguing that “a ballot that displays one candidate’s photograph while omitting the others is not a neutral instrument.”
The presidential candidate consequently demanded that the ECNBA immediately suspend the election, preserve all voting and authentication data for an independent audit, commission a third-party forensic review of the platform, explain the reported failures to members, and postpone the election to a later date within the tenure of the current NBA National Executive.
He warned that “a flawed, rushed election carried out today under these chaotic conditions cannot yield a credible result.”
Akangbe added, “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.”
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.
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