The 2020 elections into national offices of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) have opened online with a total of 29, 635 lawyers accredited to cast their votes.
One of the presidential candidates Olumide Akpata is reportedly leading other two contestants.
The Electoral Committee of the NBA (ECNBA) had at 6.30 p.m. on Wednesday July 29, circulated the final list of accredited voters while elections began at 11.00 p.m. on the same day.
The ECNBA had told NBA members that their unique identifiers to be able to cast votes would be their Supreme Court enrolment numbers.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that at about 10.45 p.m. on Wednesday, the ECNBA began distribution of personalised SMS and e-mails to accredited lawyers containing the voting link.
The link is personal to every lawyer, who is expected to input his Supreme Court enrolment number and click on ‘authenticate’ to proceed to the voting arena.
The ECNBA further directed that at the voting arena, every lawyer should click on his or her candidates of choice, adding that once done with the selection, the lawyer should review and crosscheck before submission.
Among candidates for the various offices are three presidential candidates: Messrs Babatunde Ajibade (SAN), Dele Adesina (SAN) and Olumide Akpata.
There are six candidates for the office of First Vice President of the NBA, two candidates for NBA’s second vice president position and four candidates for the position of NBA general secretary.
Others are three candidates for the post of the assistant secretary, a candidate for the post of the treasurer, a candidate for the position of the financial secretary, and two candidates for the post of the publicity secretary.
Four candidates are contesting for the office of the NBA Assistant Publicity Secretary, and two candidates for the post of the welfare secretary.
In a statement made available to NAN, the ECNBA said it received complaints of some NBA members being placed in branches other than theirs.
It said that the situation was regretted.
He said it happened because some members, during verification, did not fully update information on their current branches and gender, and were consequently assigned the default positions.
A NAN correspondent monitoring the elections online reports that at the time of filing this report, 13,000 voters out of 29,635 had cast their votes.
