NBA 2024 Election: Zoning, Transparency and Legitimacy

The NBA election for a new executive ended with my friend and lawyer, Mazi Afam Osigwe, as the winner. I publicly sided with him for his ability and character. Thankfully, most lawyers who voted agreed he could lead the NBA now. I am happy.

That said, I have a couple of lessons and issues about the elections. First, zoning and single-term tenure have created stability and enabled the Nigerian Bar Association to focus on the candidate’s qualities instead of stoking ethnic or religious tensions in the bid to win office.

The 2024 NBA election had three Igbo presidential candidates from the same town in Anambra State, and it did not matter to the rest of the country. The issue was their ability and voters’ preference.

I am of the considered view that the Nigerian state and political actors should learn a lesson from this and amend our constitution to entrench zoning among the six geopolitical zones. It will stabilise our politics and allow voters to focus on personal qualities like character, antecedents, and capacity.

The second issue is the technological advancements in the NBA election. Everybody could follow online as lawyers cast their votes from the comfort of their homes. While the country may not be ready for voting using our phones, we are prepared for online real-time visibility of results. INEC and State election bodies should learn from this.

It is on this note of widely acknowledged transparency that I found the letter of withdrawal of one of the candidates, Chukwuka Ikwuazom SAN, disturbing. He withdrew and alleged (in his words), “Since the commencement of voting earlier today, my supporters and I have observed disturbing patterns that do not align with the actual votes cast. It has become increasingly evident that the integrity of the electoral process has been compromised.

“Despite the overwhelming support from my dedicated supporters, the reported figures do not align with the true expression of our votes. It would appear that the system has been manipulated to favour a predetermined outcome, consistently placing me in third position.”

These are grave allegations from a Senior Advocate of Nigeria. I would have joined him to raise the alarm, as a Nigerian who has been at the forefront of the campaign for the use of technology in our elections and transparency of the process, if not that the learned silk provided no evidence of misconduct except that he was consistently in the third position. A position he was not happy about and did not anticipate.

I advise the NBA electoral body to quickly investigate these grave allegations and robustly defend the integrity of their process, which Mr Ikwuazom had placed on trial. The NBA should act like JAMB in the Mmesoma case, vigorously defend itself, and remove doubts about its widely praised system. Silence, in this case, would not be golden or wise.

In future elections, the NBA, if they are not doing so already, should appoint a respected and recognised audit firm with IT capability to conduct integrity tests on their voting system before elections and certify the results after elections. The example of Big Brother Naija, which used the global accounting firm Deloitte to certify the results of online votes, may be worth considering.

I also suggest that if the Senior Advocate’s allegations are untrue, malicious and intended to delegitimise the victory of his contender, then he should be sanctioned to deter losers from impugning the integrity of a process to overcome their embarrassment.

While elections in Nigeria, as a whole, have been widely acknowledged as opaque, we must resist the temptation to delegitimise elections without evidence. Moreso, of a body like NBA, which Nigerians look up to as a bulwark against bad government and enforcement of citizen’s fundamental rights. A delegitimised NBA executive would not augur well for everybody.

Osita Chidoka
22 July 2024

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