BY EMEKA NWADIOKE

• ALSO, MORE VOTERS ON PORTAL THAN ON VOTERS’ REGISTER

The tally of votes on the election portal deployed for the recently concluded Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) Election is incorrect, CITY LAWYER can authoritatively report.

Also, the Electoral Committee of the NBA (ECNBA) uploaded more voters than the number of voters published by the committee in its final verified voters’ register.

For the presidential race, while the election portal records that 18, 201 votes tallied and 54 abstentions were from “18, 256 ballots,” a tally of the votes and abstentions by CITY LAWYER shows that the correct total is 18,255 ballots. This shows that the total ballots shot up by one ballot.

When CITY LAWYER tallied the ballots for the post of 1st Vice President, the same error margin recurred. While the election portal hosted by ElectionBuddy, a world class election company, tallied the 17, 312 ballots and 943 abstentions at a total 18, 256 ballots, the actual figure is 18, 255 ballots.

For the post of 2nd Vice President, the election portal tallied the 15, 442 votes and 2,813 abstentions again at 18, 256 ballots as against the correct tally of 18, 255 ballots.

The tally for the post of General Secretary is not different. While ElectionBuddy tallied the 17, 941 ballots and 314 abstentions at 18, 256 ballots, the actual figure is again 18, 255 ballots, showing that the tally shot up by one ballot.

The error recurs for all the posts, including the uncontested posts such as Treasurer and Financial Secretary. The posts that suffered the same “mystery one vote” gap include Welfare Secretary, Publicity Secretary, Assistant Secretary and Assistant Publicity Secretary.

Meanwhile, the voters register deployed for the election may have exceeded the register used for the election again by one voter. While the ECNBA had in its “ECNBA STATEMENT N0. 018 ACCREDITED VOTERS LIST” declared the number of verified voters on the register as 29, 635, the records on the election portal show that 29, 636 voters were uploaded on the election platform. The notice on the election portal reads that 18, 256 ballots were “submitted of 29636 eligible voters.” 

It is recalled that the electoral committee had while announcing the number of verified voters on the final voters’ register said: “Further to the publication of the full list of legal practitioners qualified to vote, the ECNBA now presents a total of 29,635 verified and duly accredited members who have fulfilled all requirements for voting in the NBA National Officers elections 2020.”

When CITY LAWYER sought an explanation on the wrong ballot tallies from the Electoral Committee of the Nigerian Bar Association (ECNBA), its Secretary Cordelia Eke promised to provide an explanation. However, despite repeated reminders, this was not made available at press time.

Former NBA presidential candidate, Mr. Dele Adesina SAN had petitioned the NBA Board of Trustees over the elections, alleging rigging and other irregularities. In a petition dated 2nd August, 2020 Adesina stated that “Our I.C.T. Consultants informed us that though the voting site might have appeared credible on the surface as a decoy, it is apparent to state that the data uploaded to the site was programmed and preconfigured to achieve a premeditated result in an obvious case of data diddling.”

Continuing, Adesina said: “Right from the outset of the election and up till the end of same, all the candidates virtually maintained the same percentage of votes relative to each other and the total votes cast. This fact alone is indicative of the possibility of a system which was programmed towards a predetermined result. A close examination of the recorded result at different timelines shows percentage movement of the Presidential Candidates as 54%, 23% and 21% with little or no variation. The system was obviously programmed to distribute votes at either +1 or – 1 throughout the 24 hour period. According to the Interim Report of our Technical Team, “statistically, the voting result showed no randomness of any sort, which raises the question of whether there was no tampering of votes.” ”

According to results announced by ECNBA Chairman, Mr. Tawo Eja Tawo SAN, Mr. Olumide Akpata polled 9, 891 or 54.3 per cent votes to beat his closest rival, Dr. Babatunde Ajibade SAN who garnered 4,328 (23.8 per cent) votes.  Adesina polled 3, 982 votes (21.9 per cent) to bring up the rear. Adesina had a few hours to the end of the election demanded cancellation of the poll, saying it was fraught with irregularities. 

Copyright 2020 CITY LAWYER. Please send emails to citylawyermag@gmail.com. Join us on Facebook at https://web.facebook.com/City-Lawyer-Magazine-434937936684320 and on TWITTER at https://twitter.com/CityLawyerMag All materials available on this Website are protected by copyright, trade mark and other proprietary and intellectual property laws. You may not use any of our intellectual property rights without our express written consent or attribution to www.citylawyermag.com. However, you are permitted to print or save to your individual PC, tablet or storage extracts from this Website for your own personal non-commercial use.