FOLLOWING the declaration of Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Afam Osigwe as the president-elect of the Nigerian Bar Association, his opponents in the polls have questioned the integrity of the process and called for an audit.
The first runner-up, Tobenna Erojikwe who was said to have polled 10998 as against Osigwe’s 20,435, said he has “reasonable and well-informed basis to believe that the electoral process and the election were not credible or satisfactory”.
In a statement dated July 21, 2024 and personally signed by him, Erojikwe noted that at three different times before the polls, he had cause to write to the Electoral Committee of the Nigerian Bar Association, ECNBA, to express concerns and highlight certain breaches and irregularities surrounding the election.
He said, “My initial complaint centred on the opaqueness of the selection process for the election service providers and the lack of information to enable us to make a fully informed assessment of the shortlisted service providers.This call led to the ECNBA carrying out a fresh bidding exercise that resulted in the selection of Election Buddy”.
“By another letter dated 4 June 2024, I raised concerns about the provisions of the guidelines for the election set out in the NBA Constitution 2015 (as amended) which the ECNBA had obeyed in disobedience including the failure to provide voting guidelines and a voters’ list within the timeframe stipulated by the NBA Constitution.
“I repeated this call in my last letter of 19 July 2024, and it was not until 4 hours before the commencement of polls that the ECNBA published the full list of eligible voters in defiance of the provisions of Paragraph 9 of Part V of Second Schedule to the NBA Constitution which provides in mandatory terms that the ECNBA shall publish the full list of voters at least 45 (forty-five) clear days before the date of the election”.
Erojikwe said if the breaches and irregularities were restricted to the process leading up to the elections, and the election was conducted in a credible manner, it might have been easier to overlook them.
Similarly, the Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Chukwuka Ikwuazom who was said to have polled 9018 votes to emerge as the 2nd runner-up, has also requested access to critical information and documents related to the elections.
In a letter he signed and addressed to ECNBA chairman, Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Oluseun Abimbola, Ikwuazom said his request is “prompted by several concerning anomalies and irregularities observed during the electoral process”.
Ikwuazom who had sensationally pulled out of the race during the elections, said he and his team observed four anomalies namely; identity theft of voters & potential double voting, Discrepancies in Vote Display and Update, Suspicious Vote Increase Patterns and Discrepancies in Vote Patterns.
He, therefore, made a formal request to be provided within 48 hours with full access to the server and application log files used during the election period, complete database records, including voter information and voting transactions among other information.
