Badejo-Okusanya wins NBA presidential race, to become second female president

Mrs Badejo-Okusanya will be the second woman to lead the Nigerian Bar in its 66-year-old history, and the first in 35 years since the NBA last had a female president in 1991.

The Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) has elected Oyinkansola Badejo-Okusanya, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), as its next president after she polled the most votes when voting officially ended Sunday morning.

Mrs Badejo-Okusanya, the only female among the three presidential candidates, polled 12,317 votes to emerge as the winner of the election which was held through electronic voting for 24 hours, from 7:35 a.m. on Saturday to 7:34 a.m. on Sunday.

The SAN defeated her two male challengers, receiving 47.18 per cent of the 26,106 ballots cast in the presidential election, based on the final tally on the Live Election Results dashboard maintained by the Electoral Committee of the NBA (ECNBA).

Lateef Omoyemi Akangbe, also a SAN, secured 7,934 votes (30.39 per cent) to come second and Olumuyiwa Akinboro, another SAN, polled 5,855 votes (22.43 per cent) to take the third position.

The live results dashboard updated every 10 seconds throughout the voting period.

PREMIUM TIMES monitored the dashboard for more than an hour after voting was scheduled to end at 7.34 a.m., to confirm the final tally.

The final results showed that the total votes cast across 13 national officers’ elections stood at 26,184, representing 31.86 per cent voter turnout of the total 82,172 registered voters.

However, the ECNBA had yet to officially announce the results as of the time of time filing this report.

When inaugurated, Mrs Badejo-Okusanya will be the 33rd president of the NBA.

She will be the second woman to lead the Nigerian Bar in its 66-year-old history, following Priscilla Kuye, who emerged as the first president of the association of Nigerian lawyers in 1991 and held the position until 1992.

The NBA will inaugurate its new national officers who emerged from Saturday’s election during its Annual General Conference scheduled for August 21 and 28 August in Port Harcourt Rivers State. The outgoing president, Afam Osigwe, and his co-executives are expected to hand over to the new leadership during the conference.

Controversies, low voter turnout

Characterised by controversies leading up to Saturday morning’s opening of voting, the election recorded a low turnout of 26,184 compared to the over 40,000 who voted in the last 2024 election.

In the 2024 election, Mr Afam Osigwe polled more than 20,000 votes, more than half of the ballots cast, to emerge the winner of the presidential race. Mrs Badejo-Okusanya won with 12,317 votes, about 47.18 per cent of the total votes cast in the presidential election.

Voting, which was scheduled to commence at 12 a.m. on Saturday, did not commence until 7.35 a.m., the latest twist in the controversies that characterised the build-up to the election.

According to the ECNBA, the delay was caused by a “deliberate, coordinated and sustained cyberattack” that the voting platform suffered from external actors seeking to disrupt the election.

The election process has been fiercely criticised for a lack of transparency, a perennial issue that has dogged every election cycle since the NBA adopted electronic voting in 2016.

Many called for the postponement of the election, citing issues with the constitution of the ECNBA (the body that oversaw the poll) and the credibility of the voter register.

The intervention by the Attorney-General of the Federation, Lateef Fagbemi, failed to resolve the issues and uncertainty continued to cloud the election even two days before its scheduled kick-off.

It was only on Tuesday that the Court of Appeal, Ibadan Division, overturned the proceedings of the Oyo State High Court that had restrained the ECNBA from conducting the association’s 2026 national officers’ election.

Even with the appellate court’s verdict, the managing director of the service provider overseeing the electronic voting platform remained in the custody of the State Security Service (SSS) amid the disputes and allegations thrown up in the build-up to the election.

Not until Thursday did the NBA announce that the election would proceed on Saturday as scheduled, following the release of the service provider’s managers.

The association’s National Executive Council condemned the detention, demanded the official’s immediate release and reaffirmed that there was no operational or logistical reason to postpone the election.

The NBA announced the release of the service provider later that day.

Runner-up alleges irregularities
Before voting ended on Sunday, Mr Akangbe, who placed second in the presidential race, alleged that the election was marred by a series of irregularities.

In a protest letter to the ECNBA, Mr Akangbe described the election as a “catastrophic structural and technical collapse” of the electoral process and demanded its immediate suspension.

He alleged that the electronic voting portal became inaccessible to many of the association’s more than 82,000 accredited voters, with users reporting authentication failures, error messages and repeated timeouts. He also questioned reports that votes cast before the outage could be cancelled if the process restarted, arguing that such a development undermined confidence in the election.

He further alleged that the ECNBA breached its revised electronic voting guidelines by sending one-time passwords (OTPs) through email instead of SMS, contrary to assurances given to members less than 24 hours before the election.

He also claimed that the electronic ballot displayed only the photograph of Mrs Badejo-Okusanya, while the photographs of the other two cleared presidential candidates, including his, were either omitted or failed to render.

Mr Akangbe urged the ECNBA to suspend the election, preserve all electronic voting records, commission an independent forensic audit of the voting platform and postpone the poll until the identified concerns were resolved.

Later on Sunday, Mr Akangbe said he had continued to receive complaints from lawyers across the country who were unable to cast their votes because of technical challenges. He also claimed that he had been unable to vote despite repeated attempts.

Mr Akangbe further alleged that his team had records showing that the electronic voting system allowed some members to vote more than once, contrary to the principle of “one member, one vote.” He urged eligible lawyers to continue trying to vote for as long as the voting window remained open, saying the credibility of the NBA’s democratic process must be protected.

The president-elect

Mrs Badejo-Okusanya, who emerged as the NBA’s president-elect on Sunday, was called to the Nigerian Bar in 2002 after obtaining her Law degree from the University of Lagos, where she previously earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English.

Her legal career started at Olaniwun Ajayi LP and became a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), the highest honour in the Nigerian legal profession, on 29 September 2025.

In the course of her legal practice, she was appointed in 2007 as the Senior Special Assistant on Justice Sector Reform to the then-Governor of Lagos State, Babatunde Fashola. At the time, she worked in the office of the then-Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice, Olasupo Shasore.

She is a member of the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA), the International Council for Commercial Arbitration (ICCA), the African Arbitration Association, ArbitralWomen, the International Bar Association (IBA), the Commonwealth Lawyers Association (CLA), the International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA), and a Life Member of the African Women Lawyers Association (AWLA). She also serves on the Board of the Lagos Court of Arbitration (LCA).

Her Bar activities have included various leadership roles.

She previously served as Assistant Secretary of the NBA Lagos Branch; Delegate to the 2006 NBA Elections; Member of the NBA Lagos Branch Building Committee; Member of the Future of the Legal Profession Committee; Member of the Conference Investigation Committee; Alternate Chair of the 2023 Annual General Conference Planning Committee; and Chair of the 2024 Annual General Conference Planning Committee.

She was co-opted to serve as a member of the NBA National Executive Council in 2022. She won the NBA Presidential Medal of Service in August, 2024.

She became a founding partner of Africa Law Practice NG & Company in 2017.

The law firm, where she is Co-Head of Litigation and Dispute Resolution Practice, is among Nigeria’s leading commercial law firms with affiliations across Africa.

– Culled from Premium Times