NBA ELECTION: Clean-up of Voters’ Register Gets Underway

• ECNBA, Candidates, ICT Experts Parley
• Fresh Verification Exercise Doubtful

The Electoral Committee of the Nigerian Bar Association (ECNBA) has about now commenced a “clean-up” of the recently released final voters’ list in line with resolutions reached at the meeting of the NBA leadership with past NBA presidents and secretaries.

This is contrary to speculations that pervaded the legal community indicating that the verification exercise will commence afresh today and urging eligible voters to take advantage of the impending exercise.

There had been posts by several campaign teams on social media platforms urging their supporters to participate actively in the verification exercise which is alleged to hold between today and Tuesday.

But a source who attended the meeting of past NBA presidents and secretaries told CITY LAWYER that there is no iota of truth in the rumour. “It is possible that whoever is peddling the rumour was either not listening actively or chose to hear what he wanted to hear,” our source said.

He stated that a meeting of ECNBA, the candidates and their ICT consultants has been scheduled to commence at 10 o’clock today at the NBA Headquarters to review the voters’ list and purge it of any irregularities. This will set the stage for the election that may now hold between July 29 and July 30, 2018.

CITY LAWYER investigation also showed that, like the previous meetings, only presidential candidates and their technical experts may have been invited to the review exercise. When CITY LAWYER spoke with an aspirant for the post of General Secretary, he expressed surprise at the prospect of the meeting, stating that he had not been invited.

A potpourri of meetings was convened by NBA President, Mr. Abubakar Mahmoud SAN to find solution to the crisis that rocked the association following concerns on the integrity of the electoral process.

CITY LAWYER had in an exclusive report revealed that a presidential candidate in the forthcoming election is a co-director at Access Bank Plc with Dr. (Mrs.) Ajoritsedere Josephine Awosika, the first female Chairman of CHAMS Plc.

It was unclear at press time whether the meeting will also deal with the issue of post-election audit as indicated by a statement by Mahmoud on the issue. When CITY LAWYER telephoned ECNBA Secretary, Mr. Bolaji Agoro, yesterday for clarification, his phone “could not be reached.”

The NBA President had stated that the entire electoral process shall now be “disaggregated into three (3) stages and each stage shall be handled by separate entities or service providers duly appointed by the ECNBA. The three stages are: (a.) pre-election: process of compilation and verification/validation of list of voters; (b.) election: the deployment of the e-voting platform for NBA elections; (c.) post-election: an audit of the electoral process.”

This is aimed to boost stakeholders’ confidence in the electoral process.

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