Senior lawyer Oyinkansola Badejo-Okusanya is on course to become president of the Nigerian Bar Association after taking a commanding lead in the association’s presidential election.
Results displayed on the live dashboard of the Electoral Committee of the Nigerian Bar Association and seen on Saturday showed Badejo-Okusanya polling 12,317 votes, representing 47.18 per cent of the votes cast.
Her closest rival, Lateef Akangbe, had secured 7,934 votes (30.39 per cent), while Olumuyiwa Akinboro polled 5,855 votes (22.43 per cent).
The ECNBA dashboard indicated that 26,106 votes were cast out of 82,172 registered voters, representing a voter turnout of 31.86 per cent.
In a statement released on Saturday via its official X handle, the association said voting, which commenced at 7:35 a.m. on Saturday, would run for 24 hours.
“Voting in the 2026 Nigerian Bar Association National Elections commenced at 7:35 am today, Saturday, 18 July 2026, and will remain open until 7:35 am tomorrow, Sunday, 19 July 2026,” it said.
Checks showed that voting had closed.
“Election Closed. The ECNBA Electronic Voting Portal is currently unavailable. Voting has been closed by the Election Committee.
“Thank you for participating in the ECNBA electoral process. Results will be published by the Election Committee when approved,” the portal read when PUNCH Online checked at 10 am on Sunday.
However, the ECNBA had yet to make an official declaration of the winner as of the time of filing this report.
If declared the winner, Badejo-Okusanya will become only the second woman to lead the NBA since its establishment.
The first female president of the association was Priscilla Olabori Kuye, who served from 1991 to 1992.
The election was preceded by weeks of controversy, including litigation, calls for its postponement and disagreements over the adoption of a consensus candidate for the presidency.
Shortly after voting commenced, the electronic voting portal reportedly experienced technical glitches.
Akangbe, a former chairman of the NBA Lagos Branch, wrote an emergency protest to the ECNBA, calling for the immediate suspension of the election.
He alleged that the electronic voting portal had collapsed and that one-time passwords were being delivered to voters via email instead of SMS, contrary to the committee’s revised guidelines.
Akangbe also claimed that the presidential ballot displayed the photograph of only one candidate while omitting those of the others.
He argued that the alleged irregularities had compromised the credibility of the election.
“A flawed, rushed election carried out today under these chaotic conditions cannot yield a credible result,” he wrote in his protest letter.
“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.”
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