NBA Election: Only female candidate Badejo-Okusanya takes early lead amid cyberattack chaos

Oyinkansola Badejo-Okusanya, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), has taken an early lead in the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) presidential election, standing as the only female candidate in the race. As of Saturday afternoon, she had garnered 9,053 votes, representing 45.18% of the ballots counted on the live election results portal.

Her closest competitor, fellow SAN Lateef Omoyemi Akangbe, had secured 6,253 votes (31.27%), while Olumuyiwa Akinboro, also a SAN, trailed with 4,709 votes (23.54%). The voter turnout indicated that 20,035 of the 82,164 registered voters had participated by approximately 4:14 p.m. on Saturday.

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deliberate, coordinated and sustained cyberattack

The election, which was scheduled to commence at midnight West African Time on Saturday, experienced a substantial delay. According to the Electoral Committee of the Nigerian Bar Association (ECNBA), the voting platform suffered a "deliberate, coordinated and sustained cyberattack" from external actors aiming to disrupt the process. This attack caused the commencement of voting to be postponed until 7:35 a.m. on Sunday, extending the 24-hour voting window.

The delay led to significant controversy, with some lawyers, including Mr. Akangbe, demanding the election's suspension. Akangbe described the situation in a protest letter as a "catastrophic structural and technical collapse" of the electoral process. He alleged widespread inaccessibility to the voting portal for many of the association's over 82,000 accredited voters, citing authentication failures and error messages. The ECNBA assured members that its cybersecurity team and the service provider had activated security protocols to repel the attack and restore the platform, emphasizing that no votes were cast while the system was offline.

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catastrophic structural and technical collapse