Cyberattack, Low Turnout Trail Badejo-Okusanya’s Historic NBA Presidency
More than three decades after a woman last led the Nigerian Bar Association, the country’s largest professional body of lawyers has again placed its highest office in a woman’s hands, though the victory arrived through one of the most turbulent elections in the association’s recent history, shadowed by a cyberattack, collapsed voting links and open protests from senior members over the credibility of the process.
Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Mrs Oyinkansola Badejo-Okusanya, emerged as the 33rd President of the NBA after the Chairman of the Electoral Committee of the Nigerian Bar Association, Chief Aham Ejelam (SAN), declared the results at the association’s National Secretariat in Abuja on Sunday. According to the committee, she polled 12,317 votes, representing 47.18 per cent of the ballots cast, defeating fellow Senior Advocates Lateef Omoyemi Akangbe, who secured 7,934 votes (30.39 per cent), and Aare Olumuyiwa Akinboro, who polled 5,855 votes (22.43 per cent). Ejelam disclosed that a total of 26,106 votes were recorded in the presidential contest.
Her margin of victory, roughly 4,383 votes over her nearest rival, gave her a clear plurality without crossing the halfway mark, a reflection of a three way race in which no candidate secured an outright majority. She will serve a two year tenure spanning 2026 to 2028.
Badejo-Okusanya’s emergence carries deep symbolic weight. She becomes only the second woman to lead the NBA in the association’s history of more than six decades, after Dame Priscilla Kuye, who served between 1991 and 1992. Unlike Kuye, who ascended to the presidency after serving as Vice President and succeeding Clement Akpamgbo when he was appointed Attorney General of the Federation, Badejo-Okusanya is the first woman to win the office through direct election by the general membership.
A graduate of the University of Lagos, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in English before proceeding to study Law at the same institution, she was called to the Nigerian Bar in 2002 and attained the rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria on 29 September 2025. She is a Partner at ALP NG and Co, where she serves as Co Head of the firm’s Litigation and Dispute Resolution practice, and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators. Within the association, she has served as Assistant Secretary of the NBA Lagos Branch and chaired the planning committee for the 2024 Annual General Conference.
In an interview on Arise News after her win, the president elect framed her campaign around competence rather than gender. “I deliberately ran my campaign on that score, not on gender, but on capacity,” she said, adding that she hoped the profession would reach “the point where gender is no longer part of the conversation, where all that we see is capacity.” She noted that she had won “decisively,” with about 4,000 votes more than her closest competitor.
Badejo-Okusanya was absent when the results were announced. A member of her campaign team, Aminu Gadanya (SAN), attributed her absence to a flight delay and said she was committed to extending a “handshake of friendship” to all aggrieved candidates in the interest of unity.
The poll that produced her was anything but smooth. Voting in the 2026 national elections had been scheduled to open in the early hours of Saturday, 18 July, but was delayed by roughly seven hours after the electronic voting platform failed. The Electoral Committee, in a statement signed by Ejelam and its Secretary, Ibrahim Aliyu Nassarawa, said the platform had come under a “deliberate, coordinated and sustained cyberattack” aimed at disrupting, sabotaging and undermining the election.
The committee said emergency measures were activated with its cybersecurity team and its Election Voting Service Provider to contain the attack, and that the system was migrated to a new, secured domain before balloting resumed at 7:35 a.m. on Saturday and ran through to Sunday morning. It assured members that no votes were recorded during the disruption and that voting began only after the platform had been fully secured.
The outgoing President, Mazi Afam Osigwe (SAN), who was sworn in as the 32nd President in August 2024, said the election survived a calculated attempt at sabotage. “Our colleagues planned to truncate the election, but we stood firm. Every effort to derail this process failed,” he said, describing the period as “a trying time for the Bar.” He added that “the cyberattack shows that we must do more in data protection,” and disclosed that the electoral committee would conduct a comprehensive review of the process to strengthen the association’s cybersecurity and electoral integrity in future contests.
Osigwe also struck a defensive note on the Bar’s independence. “We must be able to promote the rule of law, and the NBA, made up of lawyers, should be able to determine the course of its electoral process,” he said, adding, “May we never see the day when those who lead us will be elected by people other than lawyers.” The remark alluded to the tension in the build up to the poll, when the committee rejected an alleged directive to postpone the election.
The credibility questions rest heavily on participation figures. The Electoral Committee put the number of accredited voters at 82,164, meaning the 26,106 ballots cast in the presidential race translate to a turnout of roughly 32 per cent, one of the lowest in recent memory for a keenly contested NBA presidential poll.
Akangbe placed the effective turnout even lower, at about 27 per cent, and argued that it marked a steep fall from previous cycles. By his account, about 58.61 per cent of eligible voters participated in the 2022 election, while turnout stood at 56.4 per cent in 2024. He maintained that the drop was “not the result of voter apathy but of systemic failure, platform collapse, untested authentication changes and the insistence on proceeding with an election that was not ready.”
In a statement issued on Saturday, Akangbe described the exercise as “shambolic” and alleged that the overwhelming majority of lawyers were prevented from voting by a platform that repeatedly failed. He said many members “stayed awake for two consecutive nights” in unsuccessful attempts to cast their ballots, and commended the association’s 141 branches for mobilising members through the disruption.
Central to his objection was a last minute change in the voter verification method. According to him, the committee switched from email authentication to an SMS based system barely two days before the election, leaving more than 82,000 accredited lawyers to rely on a process they had neither tested nor grown familiar with. He also questioned the decision to move the election date without the approval of the National Executive Council, and said an agreement reached on 15 July, in the presence of the Attorney General of the Federation and the Chairman of the Body of Benchers, to shift the poll by one week for member sensitisation, was not honoured.
Akangbe disclosed that he was himself unable to vote despite receiving multiple access links from the committee chairman and the NBA President. “If the chairman of the ECNBA and the President of the association could not get the system to work for a presidential candidate, what happened to the ordinary member who had no one to call?” he asked. He further alleged “credible reports” that some individuals voted more than once, and vowed that every complaint and screenshot was being documented. “The work continues. The fight for a Bar that is transparent, accountable, and worthy of the profession it represents continues. And I am not going anywhere,” he said.
The disquiet extended beyond the candidates. Jibrin Okutepa (SAN), in a post on his X handle, said he had “lost faith in the Nigerian Bar Association as a professional association of lawyers,” alleging that “credibility, objectivity, honesty and integrity have all departed from the NBA.” He described the outcome as a “coronation” rather than an election and accused the electoral committee of lacking competence and independence, claiming it was “teleguided to produce a pre-determined outcome.”
Okutepa drew a pointed comparison with the legal profession’s earlier posture toward the Independent National Electoral Commission, noting that some lawyers who “threatened fire and brimstone over the glitch in the INEC viewing portal” were now excusing similar failures in the NBA’s own platform.
A more measured critique came from legal practitioner Adepeju Jaiyeoba, who acknowledged that the result reflected the will of the majority while insisting that the process itself raised legitimate concerns. “Nothing can stop the will of the majority. If Mrs B was destined to win, conduct the election a million times, the result will still be the same,” she wrote, before adding that “the question that arises from what happened yesterday is more towards credibility, and everyone was affected.” She disclosed that she received neither a trial email nor a text message before the poll, and argued that once the committee settled on phone numbers alone for verification, members should have been given a fresh opportunity to confirm their contact details.
Amid the disputes, senior figures urged reconciliation. Kemi Pinheiro (SAN) congratulated the president elect and pressed her to make reunification her foremost priority, warning that she was inheriting an association “polarised along several lines: generational, ideological, and sometimes personal.” He said “a united Bar is indispensable to the protection of the rule of law, the welfare of lawyers, and the defence of justice and good governance in our nation.”
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar also congratulated Badejo-Okusanya, describing her victory as “another significant milestone for women in the legal profession.” He called the NBA “a vital pillar in defending constitutional democracy, the rule of law, human rights and judicial independence,” and urged the incoming leadership to act “with courage and independence while promoting equal access to justice for all Nigerians.”
Beyond the presidency, the association elected a full slate of national officers for the 2026 to 2028 term. Oghenero Okoro emerged as First Vice President with 11,024 votes, Afam Okeke as General Secretary with 8,478 votes, Aghogho Gladys as Assistant General Secretary with 14,312 votes, and Chinelo Audrey Ofoegbunam as Welfare Secretary with 14,911 votes.
The task before Badejo-Okusanya is now twofold. Beyond the ordinary demands of leading tens of thousands of lawyers across 141 branches, she must confront lingering questions about the integrity of the vote that produced her and rebuild confidence in the association’s electronic voting architecture, which the outgoing administration itself has conceded requires urgent reform. The promised review by the electoral committee, coupled with the documented grievances of the losing candidates, suggests the controversy is unlikely to fade quietly.
For an association that has long positioned itself as the conscience of Nigeria’s democracy and a frequent critic of electoral shortcomings in the wider polity, the events of 18 and 19 July have placed its own house under scrutiny. How the incoming leadership responds, and whether it can convert a divisive victory into a unifying mandate, will shape not only Badejo-Okusanya’s tenure but the credibility of the Bar’s future elections.