‘YOU’VE IMPUGNED MY, AKINBORO’S INTEGRITY’

A candidate in the forthcoming Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) presidential election, Mr. Yemi akangbe SAN has told the Electoral Committee of the NBA (ECNBA) that NBA elections are compromised by insiders.

Akangbe also accused the electoral committee of impugning his integrity and that of his co-contestant, Mr. Olumuyiwa Akinboro SAN.

Citing what he termed “internal sabotage” of the Supreme Court Number (SCN) framework, the senior lawyer warned that “it is pertinent to state that the use of SCN as a form of authentication overlooks the fact that there could be internal sabotage or compromise from the NBA itself, who is the custodian of the SCN. The previous allegations of manipulation in previous election years have always been about internal sabotage and not external sabotage of the system. Thus, the use of the SCN does not protect against this possibility. We cannot continue to do something in the same way and expect a different outcome. It is better to adopt a means of authentication that the NBA has no access to or cannot interfere with.

“Furthermore, it is strongly advised that the ECNBA should access the database from the primary source, which is Access Bank, and not from the NBA, as a way of ensuring the database is not compromised either from internal or external sources.”

In a response to ECNBA’s detailed reply to concerns raised by the two presidential candidates, Akangbe stated that “In that statement, the Committee saw fit to impugn the integrity of “two of the three Presidential Candidates” by name and by implication, accusing them of leaking correspondence to “sponsored bloggers,” of disseminating “slanted and jaundiced narratives,” of orchestrating a campaign to “intimidate members of the Committee,” and of conduct falling below the standards of the legal profession. These are allegations that touch my reputation as a legal practitioner and as a Senior Advocate of Nigeria. They were published by the Committee to the entire membership without my knowledge and without affording me any opportunity to respond before publication.”

He also responded to the rebuttals offered by the electoral committee in his statement titled “RE: RESPONSE TO THE ECNBA PRESS STATEMENT DATED 12 JUNE 2026 TITLED “CLARIFICATION ON THE ENGAGEMENT OF SERVICE PROVIDERS, THE VOTER AUTHENTICATION FRAMEWORK, RESPECTIVELY, AND ADVISORY TO MEMBERS OF THE NIGERIAN BAR ASSOCIATION ON RESPONSIBLE ELECTORAL COMMUNICATION.”

Perhaps keen to leave no-one in doubt of his position, the senior lawyer wrote: “To summarise my position:
(a) The Committee’s reliance on the candidates’ silence during the shortlisting comment period is misplaced. The comment period closed nine days before the final selection was made. One cannot object to an appointment that does not yet exist.

(b) The participation of the candidates’ IT consultants at the assessment session does not constitute endorsement of the Committee’s final selection. The Committee’s suggestion to the contrary is both unsupported and logically inconsistent with its own claim that the final decision was driven by the Committee’s assessment.

(c) The sole proprietorship of Mikrodigital Connect remains a material institutional risk. Unlimited personal liability against undisclosed and potentially modest personal assets is not the robust protection the Committee presents it as.

(d) Six consecutive years of annual returns default, remedied in the hours immediately surrounding the contract award, remains a serious governance red flag that no amount of demonstrated technical capability at a live presentation can explain away.

(e) The Committee’s response on Thanelinc Nigeria Limited’s NDPC registration is carefully and conspicuously hedged. The Committee has not confirmed that Thanelinc is a registered DPCO. It is invited to publish the registration number if one exists.

(f) Whether or not the Committee formally agreed to integrate NIN, it undertook to “look into” the proposal and then silently abandoned it without communicating the outcome to the candidates. The published Step-by-Step Guide presented a fait accompli.

(g) The allegation that I handed my correspondence to “sponsored bloggers” is denied in the strongest terms and is entirely without evidence.

(h) The veiled threats of professional disciplinary action against candidates who scrutinise the Committee’s processes are inappropriate, counterproductive, and themselves raise questions about the Committee’s impartiality.”

Akangbe commended the committee “I have read the Press Statement with great care. I commend the Committee “for putting its position on the record and for engaging substantively, rather than by silence, with the concerns that have been raised. It is the mark of a healthy institution that it answers its members rather than ignores them, and I thank the Committee for that.”

But he quickly notes that “I am compelled to respond on the record and in equal detail, because the Press Statement, on closer examination, confirms rather than dispels several of the concerns I originally raised. In a number of places, the Committee’s own language reveals precisely the difficulties it seeks to explain away. In others, the statement introduces new difficulties that were not present in the original correspondence. And certain passages raise questions of an altogether different character, to which I shall come to in due course.”

On the allegation that candidates did not object during the public comment period for selection of the service providers, he stated that “The Committee’s suggestion that my silence during the shortlisting stage amounts to acquiescence in the final appointment is, with respect, a non sequitur that the dates on the Committee’s own timeline will not permit.”

Turning to the suggestion that the candidates ICT consultants endorsed the selection of the service providers, the NBA presiddential candidate wrote: “I must correct this characterisation. My IT consultant attended the assessment session of 25 May 2026 as an observer and technical adviser to my candidacy, not as a member of the Committee’s evaluation panel. He was given no vote, no scoring sheet, and no decision-making authority. He did not sign off on, endorse, or ratify the Committee’s final selection. Attending a hearing is not the same as delivering the judgment. Defence counsel does not become complicit in a conviction by reason of having been present at the trial.”

Continuing, he wrote: “If the decisive factor was the Committee’s assessment of what was demonstrated before it, then the candidates’ consultants were witnesses, not decision-makers. The Committee cannot simultaneously claim credit for the rigour of its independent evaluation and attribute responsibility for the outcome to the very candidates who now question it. The two positions are mutually exclusive, and the Committee must choose between them.”

He again queried Mikrodigital Connect’s corporate form, saying: “If the Request for Proposal for a national election of over 80,000 legal practitioners did not require even basic limited liability incorporation from the entity entrusted with the integrity of the ballot, then the RFP was not fit for purpose. The Committee’s answer to the question “why did you appoint a sole proprietorship?” is, in substance, “because our procurement document did not prevent us from doing so.” That is not reassurance. It is the problem restated in different words.”

Akangbe lampooned the suggestion that the unlimited personal liability of the entity’s alter ego is any comfort, saying: “On the second point, I must say, with the greatest of respect, that the suggestion that unlimited personal liability of a sole proprietor is a stronger protection than the corporate form with insurance and capitalisation requirements will not survive a moment’s serious analysis.

“Unlimited personal liability means that in the event of a catastrophic failure, a data breach, or a disputed election result requiring indemnification, the NBA’s sole contractual recourse would be a personal judgment against Mr Shamsuddeen Haruna, enforceable only against whatever personal assets he holds at the time of enforcement. And that is the question the Committee does not answer. Against what assets does this unlimited liability operate? No capitalisation floor has been disclosed. No professional indemnity insurance has been disclosed. No performance bond has been disclosed. No guarantee has been disclosed.”

On the controversial payment of six-year arrears of Annual Returns by the ICT entity as first reported by CITY LAWYER, Akangbe wrote: “With respect, the Committee has answered a question I did not ask. My concern was never that the Corporate Affairs Commission might strike off Mikrodigital Connect during the election. The concern is what six consecutive years of statutory default tells the membership about the entity’s institutional discipline. There are only three possible explanations for why an entity registered in November 2019 did not file a single annual return until the evening of 31 May 2026. Either the proprietor did not know the obligation existed, which would reflect poorly on his professionalism. Or he knew and did not consider it worth complying with, which would reflect poorly on his compliance culture. Or the entity was effectively dormant and was only activated for this engagement. Each of these explanations is more troubling than the last, and none of them is answered by saying that the entity performed well at a live demonstration.”

Turning to Thanelinc Nigeria Limited, Akangbe wrote: “If Thanelinc were a registered DPCO, a single sentence would have ended this matter: “Thanelinc Nigeria Limited is a registered DPCO with the NDPC under registration number.” The Committee has not written that sentence. Instead, it has described a contractual warranty with a carefully drafted carve-out that allows for the possibility that registration does not, in the Committee’s view, apply.”

He added: “I do not ask the Committee to concede the point. I ask it to resolve the point, simply and publicly. If the Committee holds a current NDPC registration certificate for Thanelinc Nigeria Limited, it should publish the registration number. One line will suffice. If it does not hold such a certificate, then the membership is entitled to know what “DPCO status” is being relied upon in its place, and on what regulatory authority the Committee has satisfied itself that an unregistered entity may lawfully act as Data Protection Officer for a national election involving the personal data of over 80,000 legal practitioners.”

On what he termed “the practical objections to NIN,” Akangbe stated that “the Committee’s defence of the existing SCN-plus-OTP framework does not fully address the vulnerability I identified. The Committee says that “authentication cannot be completed without access to that voter’s registered email address or mobile device.” That is correct as a statement of the intended design. It is considerably less reassuring as a statement of real-world security. OTPs are routinely compromised through SIM swap fraud, through social engineering, through compromised email accounts, and through interception. The Supreme Court Enrolment Number is not a secret. It appears on call-to-bar records, on practice documents, on stamps and seals, on email signatures, and on court filings. Where the OTP delivery channel is compromised, the two-factor framework reduces, in practice, to a single-factor system. The Committee’s assurance that the existing framework is “technically sound” does not engage with this vulnerability. It assumes it away.”

He stated that while a full NIN-NIMC API integration, involving biometric verification and live database queries, may not be achievable within the time remaining before Election Day, .” But NIN integration was never the only option for strengthening authentication, and the Committee has treated the proposal as though it were an all-or-nothing biometric exercise. It was not. “A simple NIN-as-knowledge-factor check, in which the voter is asked to enter a NIN that is matched against a pre-collected dataset already held by the NBA or obtainable in advance, does not require a live API integration with NIMC, does not involve facial recognition, does not raise accessibility difficulties for diaspora members who already hold a NIN, and could have been deployed within the existing timeline. The Committee does not appear to have considered this alternative.”

Akangbe may have reserved his harshest criticism of the committee’s statement for its allegations regarding “Sponsored Bloggers” and alleged threats of professional discipline. His words: “On the allegation that correspondence was “deliberately handed over to sponsored bloggers” I deny this allegation. I deny it categorically, unreservedly, and on the record. My letter to the Committee was drafted and delivered in good faith as a formal, private communication through proper channels. I did not hand my letter, or any summary of its contents, to any blogger, sponsored or otherwise, before or after delivery. In line with our resolution at the meeting of the 25th of May 2026, we agreed that in the interest of fairness, candidates should copy other persons vying for the same office in order to avoid a one-sided communication with the ECNBA. Consequently, I delivered a hard copy to the ECNBA and a soft copy where I copied the other 2 candidates, and I cannot vouch for what any other candidate kept in copy of the email did with the copy. As far as I am concerned, I never authorised the publication of my letter.

“However, it is of major concern to me that given the fact that my email had the 2 other candidates copied in on it, the ECNBA, in a formal press statement issued on the letterhead of the Electoral Committee and signed by both the Chairman and the Secretary, the Committee has chosen to accuse only two presidential candidates, by clear implication, of deliberately leaking private correspondence to “sponsored bloggers” in order to “publish slanted and jaundiced narratives” and to “intimidate members of the Committee and discredit its efforts.” These are serious allegations of dishonesty, bad faith, and coordinated media manipulation on my person. They are made without a shred of supporting evidence. If the Committee possesses evidence that I paid, instructed, or sponsored any person to publish any content in connection with this correspondence, it should produce that evidence now. If it does not possess such evidence, and I am confident it does not, then the allegation should be withdrawn, publicly, and with the same prominence with which it was made.”

He added that “I wish to be measured but unequivocal in my response. Raising factual concerns about the corporate standing, compliance history and track record of entities entrusted with a national election is not false, misleading, or inflammatory content. It is the exercise of a right. It is, I would argue, a duty. Every material factual statement in my original letter was sourced from the public register of the Corporate Affairs Commission. The Committee’s own Press Statement has acknowledged the factual accuracy of those findings. The concerns I raised are not rumour, speculation, or propaganda. They are matters of verifiable public record, and they have been confirmed as accurate by the very body that now characterises them as part of a strategy to “diminish and discredit.”

“An electoral committee that threatens candidates with professional disciplinary proceedings for scrutinising its procurement decisions is not a committee that inspires confidence in the process it administers. If the Committee’s processes are sound, they will withstand scrutiny and emerge stronger for it. If they cannot withstand scrutiny, the answer is to strengthen the processes, not to silence the scrutiny. The right of candidates and members to hold the ECNBA accountable is not a “strategy.” It is a foundational principle of democratic governance within the NBA. I intend to continue exercising it, responsibly, factually, and without apology, for as long as the integrity of this election requires it.

“I would also respectfully remind the Committee that the veiled invocation of disciplinary proceedings against candidates during an active election period is itself a matter capable of raising the gravest questions about the Committee’s impartiality and the fairness of the electoral environment it is constitutionally charged with maintaining. A committee that is willing to threaten the professional standing of candidates who ask hard questions is a committee whose own conduct deserves at least as much scrutiny as the conduct it purports to regulate.”

He stated that he remained “committed to a free, fair, transparent and credible election on 20 July 2026. I remain available to meet with the Committee at any time of its choosing to discuss these matters in good faith. I do not seek confrontation with the Committee. I seek accountability from the Committee. These are not the same thing.”

The ECNBA is yet to respond to Akangbe’s latest statement.

(C) CITY LAWYER Magazine. All rights reserved. To join our Channel, click here. Click here to join our WhatsApp chatroom. Contact us at citylawyermag@gmail.com or 081-3838-0083.