Nigeria's Bar Association Elects Its Second-Ever Female President
Oyinkansola Badejo-Okusanya, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), has won the Nigerian Bar Association's presidential election, defeating two male challengers to become only the second woman in the 66-year history of the association to hold its highest office [4]. The result, drawn from the Electoral Committee's live results dashboard, confirmed her as president-elect after 24 hours of electronic voting that was itself mired in cyberattacks, court battles, and allegations of irregularities [1][4].
Final Tally and the Road to Victory
When voting closed at 7:34 a.m. on Sunday, July 19, Badejo-Okusanya had polled 12,317 votes — 47.18 per cent of the 26,106 ballots cast in the presidential race [4]. Lateef Omoyemi Akangbe (SAN) finished second with 7,934 votes (30.39 per cent), and Olumuyiwa Akinboro (SAN) came third with 5,855 votes (22.43 per cent) [4]. The trajectory was visible well before the final count: by 11 p.m. on Saturday, Badejo-Okusanya already held 11,352 votes, representing 46.69 per cent of ballots cast at that point [1].
Total participation across all 13 national officers' elections stood at 26,184 votes — a turnout of just 31.86 per cent of the 82,172 registered voters [4]. That figure marks a sharp decline from the 2024 election, in which more than 40,000 members voted and the winning candidate, outgoing president Afam Osigwe (SAN), secured over 20,000 votes on his own [4].
When inaugurated, Badejo-Okusanya will become the 33rd president of the NBA [4]. The only previous female president, Priscilla Kuye, did not win the office through a direct election; she assumed the presidency in 1991 after the elected president, Chief Clement Akpamgbo, was appointed Attorney General of the Federation by then-Military President Ibrahim Babangida [1][4].
A Career Built Across Law, Arbitration, and Public Service
Badejo-Okusanya was called to the Nigerian Bar in 2002, having studied law at the University of Lagos — where she had earlier earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English [4]. She began her legal career at Olaniwun Ajayi LP and in 2007 was appointed Senior Special Assistant on Justice Sector Reform to Lagos State Governor Babatunde Fashola, working alongside the then-Attorney General Olasupo Shasore [4].
She became a founding partner of Africa Law Practice NG & Company in 2017, where she serves as Co-Head of Litigation and Dispute Resolution Practice [4]. Her elevation to Senior Advocate of Nigeria — the profession's highest honour — came on September 29, 2025 [4]. She holds memberships in a wide range of international legal bodies, including the London Court of International Arbitration, the International Council for Commercial Arbitration, the International Bar Association, and the Commonwealth Lawyers Association, and serves on the Board of the Lagos Court of Arbitration [4].
Within the NBA itself, her record of service spans roles from Assistant Secretary of the NBA Lagos Branch to Chair of the 2024 Annual General Conference Planning Committee, and she was co-opted to the NBA National Executive Council in 2022 [4].
An Election Shadowed by Controversy
The vote that produced this historic result was anything but smooth. Voting had been scheduled to begin at midnight on Saturday but did not start until 7:35 a.m. after the Electoral Committee of the NBA (ECNBA) said the platform had suffered what it described as a "deliberate, coordinated and sustained cyberattack" from external actors seeking to disrupt the process [1][4]. The committee said its cybersecurity team and the Election Voting Service Provider activated emergency protocols, migrated to a new secured domain, and confirmed that no votes were accepted during the disruption [1].
The turbulence predated election day by weeks. A court in Oyo State had issued an order restraining the ECNBA from conducting the election; that order was only overturned by the Court of Appeal, Ibadan Division, days before the poll [4]. The managing director of the electronic voting service provider had been held in the custody of the State Security Service amid disputes over the election's integrity, and was only released on Thursday — two days before voting began [4]. The Attorney General of the Federation, Lateef Fagbemi, attempted to mediate but the intervention did not fully resolve the standoff [4].
Outgoing president Osigwe, who faced accusations of attempting to influence the outcome, denied the allegations at a press conference in Abuja on Friday, insisting the ECNBA operated independently and that he had not backed any candidate [1].
Runner-Up Files Formal Protest
Second-place finisher Akangbe did not accept the result quietly. In a formal protest letter to the ECNBA filed before voting ended, he described the election as a "catastrophic structural and technical collapse" and demanded its immediate suspension [4]. Among his specific allegations: widespread authentication failures and timeouts that prevented many of the association's more than 82,000 accredited voters from casting ballots; the sending of one-time passwords via email rather than SMS, contrary to assurances given to members; and the claim that his photograph — along with that of the third candidate — failed to appear on the electronic ballot while Badejo-Okusanya's image displayed correctly [4].
Akangbe also alleged that his team had records showing the system allowed some members to vote more than once, and said he himself was unable to cast a ballot despite repeated attempts [4]. He called for an independent forensic audit of the voting platform and a postponement of the poll pending resolution of the identified issues [4]. The ECNBA had not officially announced the results at the time of the latest reports, though the live dashboard figures were publicly visible throughout the voting window [4].
What Comes Next
Badejo-Okusanya and the other newly elected national officers are set to be inaugurated at the NBA's Annual General Conference, scheduled for August 21 to 28 in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, where outgoing president Osigwe and his executive are expected to hand over to the incoming leadership [4]. Whether Akangbe pursues his challenge through formal legal or internal channels — and how the ECNBA responds to his allegations — will be the immediate test of whether the association can close a fractious election cycle on stable ground. The low turnout, down by roughly a third compared with 2024, also raises questions that the new president will need to address if she is to consolidate a mandate that, for all its historic significance, rested on fewer than half the votes cast in a field where fewer than a third of eligible members participated.