A candidate in the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) presidential election, Lateef Akangbe, has called for the immediate suspension of the ongoing poll, alleging that technical failures and security breaches have compromised its integrity.
One of the presidential candidates in the ongoing Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) election, Lateef Akangbe, has called for the immediate suspension of the poll, citing what he described as serious technical failures and security breaches.
In a protest letter addressed to the Electoral Committee of the Nigerian Bar Association (ECNBA) on Saturday, Akangbe alleged that the electronic voting process suffered a “catastrophic structural and technical collapse” less than three hours after voting commenced at midnight on July 18.
He urged the committee to halt the election, preserve all voting records, commission an independent audit of the e-voting platform, and postpone the exercise until the identified issues are resolved.
Akangbe claimed that the voting portal became inaccessible to most of the approximately 82,000 accredited voters due to authentication failures, error messages and repeated timeouts. He questioned the integrity of votes reportedly cast before the outage and raised concerns about the possibility of unauthorised access to the platform during the disruption.
The senior lawyer also accused the ECNBA of violating its own revised electronic voting guidelines by allegedly sending one-time passwords (OTPs) through email instead of SMS, contrary to its earlier assurance that authentication codes would be delivered strictly via registered mobile numbers.
According to him, the change undermines the security architecture of the election and raises concerns about the credibility of the authentication process.
Akangbe further alleged that the electronic ballot displayed the photograph of only one of the three cleared presidential candidates, while the photographs of the other candidates, including his, were missing, creating what he described as an unfair visual advantage.
He warned that proceeding with the election under the current conditions would undermine its legitimacy and erode confidence in whoever emerges as the eventual winner.