Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Akinboro Olumuyiwa, has rejected the outcome of the recently concluded Nigerian Bar Association, NBA, presidential election, describing the exercise as the worst in the association’s history.
Nigerian Newssphere recalls that the election, concluded on July 19, produced Oyinkansola Badejo-Okusanya, SAN, as the new NBA president.
According to the NBA, Badejo-Okusanya polled 12,317 votes, representing 47.18 per cent of the total votes cast in the national election.
Speaking during an interview on Arise Television on Tuesday, Olumuyiwa, who was one of the presidential candidates, alleged that the election was fraught with irregularities and technical failures.
He claimed that the voting portal crashed barely 30 minutes after the exercise commenced, adding that his name and photograph were initially missing from the ballot.
According to him, the incident disrupted the election process and left many voters confused.
“This is the worst of all the elections we have been having in the NBA. Take, for example, the election was supposed to commence by 12 midnight. Within 30 minutes, the site crashed and my name did not come out on the ballot. My picture was not on the ballot.
“They suddenly shut it down and later told me that it was a cyberattack. A cyberattack will not change what has been inputted into the system. It can only shut down the system.
“From midnight, I went to sleep around 6:30 a.m., and what they said was that the election was suspended. A lot of people went to sleep. They woke me up again and said the election was on,” he said.
Olumuyiwa maintained that the conduct of the election fell short of the standards expected of the NBA and insisted that the process was fundamentally flawed due to the reported technical glitches.
