NBA Election: Presidential aspirant, Dele Adesina, protests as Olumide Akpata coasts to victory

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With former chairman of the Nigerian Bar Association Section on Business Law (NBA-SL), Olumide Akpata, in an early lead in the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) presidential election, co-aspirant, Dele Adesina has called for a cancellation of the entire process.

The ex-NBA General Secretary alleged electoral irregularities in a petition to the Chairman Electoral Committee, Mr Tawo E. Tawo SAN on Thursday.

Among others, Mr Adesina claimed that the verified list of voters contained grave errors of omission and commission including but not limited to the following:

” Names of purported Lawyers without Branches ascribed to them from
Serial Number 25171 to 29635;
” Names of Lawyers under the subheading ‘International Diaspora’ from
Serial Number 12182 to 12268. A clear violation of the provisions of the
Constitution of the NBA;

“Inflation of the List of some Branches. For instance, Obollo-Afor Brancho on the Final List for Verification had only 39 names on the List from Serial Number 30424 to 30462. Strangely, this increased to 662 on the Verified List;

“Deletion of Names of Members removed from the Final List;

” Manny Members names found their way to Branches other than their own Branch.”

Mr Akpata, the only non-Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) among three presidential hopeful, has polled 8910 votes (54.1 per cent) as of 5:47p.m. on Thursday.

Following Mr Akpata is Babatunde Ajibade, SAN, who has garnered 3908 votes (23.7 per cent).

Adesina, meanwhile, is in the rear with 3659 (22.2 per cent) of the votes cast.

As at the time of this report 16477 votes had been tallied and there were 40 abstentions, bringing the total number of votes to 16,519.

A total of 29,636 lawyers are voting nationwide in the electronic poll, according to the Electoral Committee of the NBA.

Other positions being contested include first vice-president, second vice-president, general secretary, assistant secretary, treasurer, welfare secretary, financial secretary, publicity secretary and assistant publicity secretary.

Voting ends at 11p.m. on Thursday.

Describing the elections as a “sham”, Adesina, however, said “if the process is bad, the product cannot be good”.

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