Former Chairman of the National Human rights Commission (NHRC), Prof. Chidi Odinkalu has pooh-poohed the recommendation for use of National Identification Number (NIN) for the forthcoming Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) 2026 National Officers Election.

CITY LAWYER recalls that former NBA Presidents, Chief Wole Olanipekun SAN and Chief Lanke Odogiyan had recommended use of NIN in their majority report arising from the “Peace Committee” set up by the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Prince Lateef Fagbemi SAN to resolve the disagreement between some stakeholders over the election. Former NBA President, Mr. Paul Usoro SAN delivered a minority report.

Dissecting the recommendation in a trending post on his “X” handle, Odinkalu suggested that it was borne out of inadequate appreciation of the amount of work required to implement it.

He also suggested that the recommendation is a ploy by Egbe Amofin O’odua, the umbrella body of lawyers of Yoruba extraction, to “impose” its consensus candidate on Nigerian lawyers. Olanipekun is a ranking Trustee of the influential regional bloc.

Several netizens have commented on the post.

Below is the full text of the post.

CONCERNING NIN & #NBADECIDES2026

The line about the mandatory use of the National Identity Number, #NIN, to identify lawyers for the NBADecides2026, is the latest red herring in the campaign by @Egbeamofinoodua to impose a caucused ethno-tribal veto on @NigBarAssoc.

The Olanipekun-Odogiyan Report transforms this into an article of faith.

For their purposes, they claim enrollment numbers assigned by the @SupremeCourtng are “not security numbers.” But they disingenuously do not say what a “security number is.”

The #OlanipekunOdogiyanReport also doesn’t say from where they invent the concept of a “security number”.

By their rendering, a BVN would also fail their subjective standard of “Security number”. It is a standard known only to the authors of that report.

Those same authors assume that erroneously assume that
@NigBarAssoc can administer the process of data on integration this requires & that it can be done by the end of August 2026. In doing so, they reveal both their age & the age of their ideas.

This is possibly the most lazy and illiterate – I do not want to say dishonest – recommendations of that report.

Interestingly, the authors of the report did not speak to either the @nimc_ng (which administers the NIN) nor the Supreme Court (as the custodian of the Roll of lawyers) in order to inform themselves about the feasibility of their imaginings.

So let’s examine this matter a little.

Fewer than 200,000 people in the history of Nigeria have ever been enrolled as lawyers. The number on roll is assigned by the Supreme Court of Nigeria.

Yet, the Olanipekun-Odogiyan report believes that it is a less secure number than the NIN which is available to hundreds of millions of Nigerians & is notoriously porous still.

The @nimc_ng administers the NIN. It does not share that responsibility with anyone & will not outsource it either.

For its elections, the NBA relies on the Roll & records maintained by the Supreme Court.

At the moment, the NIN is not a field in the data held by the Supreme Court on lawyers in Nigeria. So, to include NIN, that will need to change at source through the addition of NIN as afnew data field. That is outside the competence of the NBA.

It is unlikely that the Supreme Court will administer this change as an election matter in order to please Olanipekun, Odogiyan, @Egbeamofinoodua, or – I may add – Lateef Fagbemi.

The implementation of any such measure will require first a decision by the Supreme Court Registry as the custodian of the Roll.

Thereafter there will need to be bureaucratic integration between NIMC & the Supreme Court.

3rd, because many lawyers on Roll had died even before the NIN was, rolled out or thereafter, there will need to be detailed due diligence & not merely in the design of the new data field

4th, all this will need to precede the integration of the data concerning those eligible for NIN in their data on the Roll.

5th, this data integration will require careful vetting. It will take time & cannot be outsourced by the NIMC.

These various steps are what the Olanipekun-Odogiyan report flippantly claims will be achieved at the snap of an imaginary finger.

If I did not know the authors, I could have misled myself into thinking they were script-writers for #TalesByMoonlight. The design is clear: if they do not get their way, they will crash the association.

Both Olanipekun and Odogiyan are yet to respond to Odinkalu’s position.

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