- Safiu Kehinde
Lateef Akangbe (SAN), one of the candidates contesting for the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) Presidency, has called for the immediate suspension of the election amid alleged rigging and sabotage of the online voting portal.
Akangbe made the call in a letter issued on Friday and addressed to the Electoral Committee of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA).
The legal practitioner alleged that the portal collapsed with the e-voting platform inaccessible as at 2:00am.
“As of 2:09 AM WAT, the official e-voting portal was entirely inaccessible to the vast majority of the approximately 82,000 accredited voters.
“Reports from voters across the country confirm that the platform was returning errors, failing to load, or timing out on authentication.
“For all practical purposes, the election has not commenced. The portal has collapsed.
“The ECNBA has reportedly indicated, through informal verbal channels, that because the portal was down, any votes cast so far will be “cancelled” and the process will “recommence.” He said.
Akangbe questioned over the statement which, according to him, raises security concerns.
“This statement, rather than reassuring, raises the gravest possible security concern. 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? How can the candidates, their agents, or the membership verify that back-end ballot dumping has not already taken place during this period of total opacity?
“What mechanism exists to distinguish a vote cast by a legitimate voter who managed to access the portal before it collapsed from a vote injected into the system by an actor with back-end access?
“And on what technical authority can the ECNBA guarantee that a “cancellation” of early votes will be complete, verifiable, and auditable, rather than a cosmetic reset that leaves compromised data in the system?” He asked.
The NBA presidential candidate further questioned the efficiency of the portal and the integrity of the database.
“The ECNBA cannot answer these questions, because the infrastructure it has deployed is not capable of answering them.
“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. The integrity of the database has been compromised from the moment the system failed. No restart can cure that.” He said.
Akangbe also alleged breach of the revised voting guidelines as the OTPs were sent on e-mails rather than SMS as stated in the guideline.
“Less than twenty-four hours ago, the ECNBA published its Revised Electronic Voting Guidelines, dated 16 July 2026, in which it announced, with prominent emphasis, a key revision to the voter authentication process.
“The previous position, under which OTPs were delivered to registered email addresses, was replaced with a revised position under which OTPs would be delivered “strictly via SMS to registered mobile number.”
“The ECNBA stated that this revision was adopted “to address perceptions, observed in previous NBA elections, that email-based OTP delivery was susceptible to manipulation.”
“That was yesterday. Today, within the first one hundred and twenty minutes of the election, reports are already flooding in from voters across the country that they are receiving OTPs via email, not via SMS.” Akangbe said.
He labelled the reversal to e-mail usage as a breach of the security architecture.
“This is not a minor technical glitch. This is a complete and bad-faith breach of the security architecture that the ECNBA itself published, in its own name, to the entire membership, less than a day ago.
“The shift from email to SMS was not a cosmetic change. It was the single most important safeguard adopted for this election, introduced expressly because the email-based system had been compromised in previous elections, most notoriously in 2018 when the EFCC filed a 14-count charge against two individuals for altering the email addresses and phone numbers of over 1,000 voters and fraudulently using their Supreme Court Enrolment Numbers to cast votes.” He said.
Akangbe also called the attention of the ECNBA to graphic defect on the presidential candidates as his image and that of fellow candidate, Muyiwa Akinboro, failed to appear on the portal.
“Reports confirm that the live presidential ballot interface, as displayed to voters who have managed to access the platform, contains an unpardonable administrative and graphic defect. Of the three cleared presidential candidates, only one candidate’s photograph is displayed on the ballot.
“The photographs of the remaining candidates, including mine, are either omitted, broken, or failing to render.
“In an electronic election, the ballot interface is the ballot paper. Its design, layout, and visual presentation must be neutral, complete, and identical for every candidate.” He said.
With only the image of Oyinkansola Badejo Okusanya (SAN) appearing on the portal, Akangbe held that the defect raised question over the competence and diligence of the Electronic Voting Service Provider and the ECNBA’s oversight of the process.
“A ballot that displays one candidate’s photograph while omitting the others is not a neutral instrument. It is a visual prompt.
“Whether by negligence or by design, it confers a presentation advantage on the candidate whose image appears and disadvantages every candidate whose image does not. In any jurisdiction, and before any reasonable individual, this would be grounds for the immediate invalidation of every ballot cast on that interface.
“That this defect exists at all, on a platform that was supposedly subjected to end-to-end testing on 11 July, a mock voting exercise open to all verified voters, and a final systems and security audit on 13 July, raises the most serious questions about the competence and diligence of the Electronic Voting Service Provider and the ECNBA’s oversight of the process.
“A defect of this nature should have been detected and corrected weeks ago. That it was not detected, or was detected and not corrected, is itself an indictment of the entire testing and audit framework.” He said.
Akangbe thereafter highlighted his demands which included the immediate suspension of the election, preservation and quarantine of all data, and commissioning of independent technical audit of the voting platform.
“I have set out three independent grounds, each of which is sufficient on its own to invalidate this election. In combination, they present a picture of systemic failure so complete that no mid-election patch, no time extension, no informal assurance, and no verbal promise of a “restart” can restore the credibility of the process.
“I therefore demand, formally, immediately, and on the record, that the ECNBA take the following steps:
“(a) Suspend the election immediately. The portal must be taken offline, in its entirety, now. No further votes should be accepted, processed, or recorded until the matters set out in this letter have been fully addressed.
“(b) Preserve and quarantine all data. Every vote cast, every authentication log, every OTP delivery record, and every access log from the period between 12:00 AM and the time of suspension must be preserved in its entirety, without alteration, deletion, or overwriting, and made available for independent audit.
“(c) Commission an immediate, independent technical audit of the platform, the database, the OTP delivery mechanism, and the ballot interface, conducted by a reputable third-party firm with no prior relationship to the ECNBA or the appointed service providers, before any resumption of voting is contemplated.
“(d) Explain to the membership, in writing and on the record, how a platform that was tested, audited, and certified for deployment collapsed within the first hour, how email OTPs were sent in direct violation of the published guidelines, and how a ballot interface with a candidate’s photograph missing passed the final pre-election review.
“(e) Postpone the election to a date within the life of this current NBA national executive that allows sufficient time for the audit, the rectification of the identified failures, and the restoration of confidence among the candidates and the membership.
“No ad-hoc fix applied under the pressure of a live, failed election can substitute for a properly constituted, independently verified, and transparently managed process.” He said.