By Sylvester Udemezue

For several years now, a troubling concern has been quietly gathering strength within the Nigerian Bar Association. What began as murmurs of discomfort has gradually matured into something far more serious: a widening and deepening loss of confidence by many Nigerian lawyers in the electronic voting system used for NBA national elections. Today, that concern can no longer be dismissed as the complaint of a few disgruntled voices. It has become too persistent, too widespread, and too consequential to ignore.

The NBA now stands at a delicate and defining moment in its institutional history. If urgent and credible steps are not taken to address the growing mistrust surrounding the Association’s electoral process, the consequences may extend far beyond one election cycle. They may affect the credibility of the Association, the legitimacy of its leadership, the unity of its membership, and the moral authority with which it speaks on constitutionalism, democracy, and the rule of law in Nigeria. This intervention is therefore not intended as an attack on any individual, faction, or tendency within the NBA. It is, rather, a constructive warning and a sincere institutional appeal. The time has come for NBA leaders and members alike to confront the issues surrounding the Association’s electoral system with honesty, maturity, courage, and urgency.

(2). The Constitutional Framework And The Deeper Crisis Beneath It.

Under the Constitution of the Nigerian Bar Association, responsibility for conducting national elections lies with the Electoral Committee of the Nigerian Bar Association (ECNBA). As has been repeatedly stated within NBA processes, the National Executive Council appoints the chairman and members of the ECNBA on the recommendation of the National Executive Committee. In the communiqué issued after the NBA NEC meeting held in Benin City on 20 November 2025, NEC approved the constitution of the ECNBA for the 2026 national elections and publicly emphasized transparency, technological reliability, and fairness in the electoral process. On paper, that sounds reassuring. In practice, however, formal declarations of transparency are no longer enough.

The deeper problem is that many lawyers do not merely want to be told that the process is transparent; they want to see, verify, and trust that it is transparent. And that is precisely where the crisis lies. The most fundamental concern confronting the NBA today is not zoning, regional politics, candidate preference, or even litigation in itself. The real issue is electronic voting and the opacity many lawyers believe surrounds it. Over the past several election cycles, a growing number of lawyers within the NBA have expressed serious doubts about the transparency, verifiability, and credibility of the electronic voting system used in NBA elections. Many believe the system is too opaque, too insulated from independent scrutiny, and too vulnerable to manipulation in favour of candidates perceived to enjoy the sympathy or backing of the establishment.

Whether every one of these suspicions is ultimately justified is not, at this stage, the most important question. The more urgent problem is that the loss of confidence itself has become real. In every democratic institution, perception matters almost as much as reality. Once a significant portion of the electorate begins to believe that the process is compromised, the legitimacy of the eventual outcome is endangered, even before the first vote is cast.

(3). Repeated Calls For Audit and The Damage Caused By Resistance To Scrutiny

Over time, several lawyers and groups within the NBA have repeatedly called for an independent audit of the electronic voting system. Such an audit would be expected to verify the integrity of the software, the transparency of vote collation, the neutrality of the technical administrators, the security of the infrastructure, and the overall reliability of the process. Yet one of the strongest grievances among many members is that repeated demands for such independent verification have not been meaningfully granted. That refusal, whether motivated by caution, institutional defensiveness, or confidence in the existing process, has had one disastrous consequence: it has deepened suspicion. The question many lawyers continue to ask is both simple and powerful: if the system is truly secure, transparent, and credible, why should an independent audit be resisted? Institutions are strengthened by scrutiny, not weakened by it.

Transparency builds confidence; opacity breeds anxiety. Verification protects legitimacy; resistance to verification undermines it. The NBA leadership should have understood long ago that in a professional body made up of lawyers trained to test evidence, probe procedure, and challenge unsupported claims, mere assurances can never permanently substitute for verifiable credibility. The recent wave of suits and petitions shows that all is no longer well with the NBA. One of the clearest signs that this crisis has reached a dangerous stage is the recent wave of lawsuits and formal petitions challenging the NBA’s electoral process and the conduct of those at the helm of the Association. On 05 March 2026, it was reported that an Oyo State High Court sitting in Ibadan had restrained members of the ECNBA from performing any function relating to the 2026 national officers’ elections and also restrained the NBA President from taking steps toward the constitution and composition of the ECNBA or interfering in the conduct of the election, pending the determination of the application before the court.

In another development, it was reported that a separate court order restraining the NBA from recognising or processing the nomination of any presidential candidate other than the consensus candidate of Egbe Amofin O’odua for the 2026 presidency, pending determination of the suit before the court. And before all these, there were reports that Aare Muyiwa Akinboro, SAN, and Lateef Omoyemi Akangbe, SAN, had petitioned the Board of Trustees of the NBA, demanding the resignation of the NBA President, Afam Osigwe, SAN, over what they described as alleged electoral bias and partisan conduct ahead of the elections. These reports, taken together, reveal something much more serious than routine disagreement. They are not isolated flashes of controversy. They are evidence of cracks, strain, and spreading disaffection within the Bar. They point to a troubling atmosphere of distrust, disappointment, suspicion, and disenchantment regarding the NBA’s internal democratic process. When lawyers increasingly go to court against their own professional Association over internal elections, when election-related court orders begin to halt or distort the electoral timetable, and when senior members petition for the resignation of the President over alleged bias, it becomes impossible to keep pretending that all is well.

The REALITY is that all is not well. And something urgent must be done. These developments are symptoms of a deeper institutional anxiety. The lawsuits themselves are not the heart of the problem. They are symptoms. The petitions are not the disease. They are warning signs. The court orders are not the crisis in themselves. They are evidence that the crisis has matured. At bottom, what these developments signify is a deeper institutional anxiety about transparency, fairness, neutrality, and trust. Courts ought ordinarily to be the last resort in disputes touching the internal democratic processes of a professional body like the NBA. The fact that multiple lawyers now appear to regard litigation as the available pathway for challenging perceived irregularities suggests that confidence in internal corrective mechanisms has been badly eroded. The frequency and intensity of recent disputes also suggest that the dissatisfaction is not limited to one camp, one aspirant, one region, or one ideology. It reflects a wider atmosphere of distrust. And at the center of that distrust lies one major grievance: the opacity of the electronic voting system and the persistent refusal to subject it to credible, independent audit. This is why it is mistaken to treat the current turbulence as merely another chapter in NBA politics. It is bigger than politics. It is about institutional confidence. It is about whether members still believe the system through which their leaders emerge is worthy of trust.

The issue is not who wins; the issue is whether members trust the process. Every election produces winners and losers. That is normal. What is dangerous is when the legitimacy of the process itself becomes the real casualty. The central issue here is not whether any particular candidate is good, bad, popular, or establishment-backed. It is not whether any region feels entitled or excluded. It is not whether one camp is more aggrieved than another. The fundamental issue is whether NBA members have confidence that the process by which votes are cast, counted, collated, and declared is genuinely transparent and beyond manipulation. An electoral system need not be actually rigged before it becomes institutionally destructive. Once it is widely perceived as untrustworthy, its damage has already begun. A leadership produced by a process many members do not trust may still occupy office, but it will govern under a cloud. Its legitimacy will be doubted. Its authority will be fragile. Its pronouncements may command office but not respect. And once that stage is reached, every future election will be approached with deeper cynicism and sharper conflict. That is why the problem must be addressed now, before suspicion hardens into permanent institutional culture, and before irreparable damage is done.

(4). NBA’s Moral Authority Is At Stake

The Nigerian Bar Association is not just another private club. It is the voice of the legal profession in Nigeria. It routinely defends constitutionalism, criticises electoral fraud, demands accountability from public institutions, and insists on due process, transparency, and the rule of law. But an institution that demands accountability from governments must itself demonstrate accountability in its own internal processes. An institution that speaks loudly about credible elections in the larger society must ensure that its own elections inspire confidence among its own members. If the NBA itself cannot run elections that many of its members trust, then its moral standing to lecture the nation on electoral integrity is weakened. This is why the current issue is not merely procedural. It is existential. NBA’s authority in national life has never depended on coercive power. It has depended on moral credibility. That credibility is one of its greatest assets. If it is squandered through avoidable opacity and needless resistance to reform, the loss will be historic.

(5). Responsibility Is Collective

It would be too easy, and indeed too lazy, to heap all blame on one person or one office. The present crisis has many contributors. Successive NBA leaderships must bear responsibility for failing to address the deepening trust deficit around the electoral system and for not taking sufficiently bold steps to restore confidence through independent verification and transparent reform. Those who rushed to litigation, though perhaps motivated by real grievances, must also reflect on whether earlier, stronger institutional advocacy for reform might have better served the long-term health of the Association. Defendants and other actors whose conduct has deepened controversy must equally bear their share of responsibility. Counsel involved in election-related disputes should ask themselves whether they are helping to heal the Association or merely prosecuting factional causes under the cover of legal representation. And the wider NBA membership cannot be completely absolved. Too many members have remained passive spectators while the Association’s democratic credibility steadily weakens. Institutional decay is often enabled not only by the actions of the powerful, but also by the silence of the many. In truth, responsibility is collective. We all share the burden of this moment.

(6). If the NBA Fails To Reform Now, the Consequences May Be Historic, Catastrophic

Institutions do not collapse in a single day. They weaken gradually, first through silence, then through denial, then through rationalisation, and finally through loss of confidence by those they are meant to serve. The NBA must understand that the current distrust surrounding its electoral system is not a minor quarrel. It is a serious institutional warning signal. When more and more lawyers begin to question the credibility of the process through which leaders emerge, the legitimacy of those leaders becomes vulnerable. Once legitimacy is questioned, authority becomes fragile. Once authority becomes fragile, internal cohesion begins to fray. If confidence in the NBA electoral system continues to decline, the consequences could indeed be both historic and catastrophic. Future NBA elections may become permanently contested. Internal divisions within the Bar may deepen. Members may gradually disengage from the Association’s democratic processes. NBA’s public interventions on national governance may lose persuasive force because critics will point to unresolved credibility problems within the Association itself. None of these outcomes would benefit the Nigerian legal profession. But there is still time to act. Reform is not a confession of guilt. Reform is not weakness. Reform is the mark of institutions that possess the wisdom, humility, and foresight to change in order to endure.

(7). What The NBA Must Do Now

NBA leadership should urgently initiate a process of genuine electoral reform to address the concerns of members. The first and most obvious step is to commission a full independent audit of the electronic voting system by a credible and respected external technology and audit team. The scope of that review should cover software integrity, system security, vote collation, administrator controls, audit trails, and verifiability mechanisms. The outcome should not be treated as secret internal information. It should be communicated in a manner capable of reassuring members. Second, NBA should be prepared, if necessary, to undertake constitutional reform through an emergency Annual General Meeting or other lawful constitutional mechanism, in order to revisit the current electoral framework and make whatever changes are necessary to restore confidence.

Third, if electronic voting is to remain, the system must be redesigned or strengthened in a manner that allows verifiable transparency without compromising ballot secrecy. Lawyers must not be asked to simply trust what they cannot independently interrogate. Fourth, NBA should consider establishing an NBA Leadership Academy or comparable institutional platform through which prospective candidates and future office holders receive grounding in the Association’s constitutional culture, leadership ethics, institutional history, conflict management, and democratic responsibilities. Electoral reform alone will not save the NBA if leadership culture remains shallow. Fifth, the Association must open a sincere, broad, and non-defensive dialogue with members, especially aggrieved members and stakeholders. Trust cannot be restored by communiqués, public statements and press releases alone. Members need to feel heard, respected, and taken seriously.

(8). A Wake-up Call, Not A Death Sentence

This moment, though dangerous, is not hopeless. The current turbulence can still become the turning point that leads to the most important institutional reform in the modern history of the Nigerian Bar Association. But that can happen only if the NBA leadership and the wider membership choose to treat the present developments not as ordinary controversies to be managed away, but as a wake-up call demanding statesmanship. The recent lawsuits and petitions should not be brushed aside as routine pre-election skirmishes. They should be read for what they are: evidence of spreading distrust. Evidence of real cracks. Evidence that many lawyers are no longer fully persuaded that the present electoral framework commands confidence. That is why the warning must be sounded clearly and loudly now.NBA must act fast. It must act sincerely. And it must act in a manner capable of restoring trust.

(9). Conclusion

The Nigerian Bar Association stands today at a crossroads. One path leads to reform, transparency, restored confidence, and stronger institutional legitimacy. The other leads to deeper suspicion, repeated litigation, chronic electoral disputes, weakened authority, and possible long-term damage to the fabric and standing of the Bar in national life. The choice should not be difficult. The NBA still possesses enormous potential. It remains one of the most influential professional institutions in Africa. It can still recover, reform, and emerge stronger. But such recovery will not come through denial. It will not come through public relations. It will not come by dismissing critics or aggrieved members as troublemakers, wailers, or haters. It will come only through honest reform and verifiable transparency.

The growing distrust surrounding the electronic voting system is a dangerous fault line running through the Association; if ignored, it may one day erupt into a crisis far more damaging than the disputes now visible. History will judge how the present leadership responds to this moment. In the end, as we often say in Nigeria, “I have said my own.” Those who have ears should hear. Yet experience shows that our problem is rarely the absence of ears; it is often our reluctance to use them. Perhaps this is why Craig D. Lounsbrough once asked,: “Do we forget, or is it that we simply refuse to remember?” Some may not be comfortable with the concerns raised in this article. That is understandable. But disagreement should never prevent us from confronting reality with honesty and courage. As Beverly Sills observed, it is not always important that everyone loves the message; what matters more is the sincerity with which it is offered. My opinion is presented in that spirit. As Anne Tyler noted, it is very difficult to live among people you love and hold back from offering them advice.

Many of us cherish the Nigerian Bar Association deeply, and it is precisely because of that affection that these warning alerts are offered. My humble appeal to NBA leaders and members alike is simple: never reject good advice; wisdom often begins with the willingness to listen. When one sees good advice, one should not only listen to it, but should also thoughtfully consider it. Ultimately, we must confront a fundamental truth: one may succeed in avoiding reality for a time, but no one can avoid the consequences of avoiding reality. The future strength, credibility, and moral authority of the Nigerian Bar Association will depend on how courageously it confronts the realities before it today.

The time to act is now!

Respectfully,
Sylvester Udemezue (udems),
08021365545.
[email protected].
(14 March 2026)

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.

I have spent time on the Third Floor of the United Nations Headquarters in New York, where the press corps works. It is not a gentle place. The journalists there are seasoned professionals drawn from every region of the world: people who have reported wars, corruption scandals, and the fall of governments. They are interested in facts, not impressed by titles.

They ask the question behind the question, and they do not move until they have an answer. When a Permanent Representative walks into that building to speak for 220 million people, the world watches. And so, on behalf of those 220 million people, I am watching too.

I am watching with grief.

Last week, President Bola Tinubu appointed Senator Jimoh Ibrahim to New York as Nigeria’s Permanent Representative to the UN. The congratulatory messages arrived immediately, as they always do in Nigeria, where appointment is confused with achievement and proximity to power as evidence of character.

The Ooni of Ife called him the right man for the job. Former Senate President Ahmad Lawan called him one of the finest Nigerians he had worked with. Governor Dapo Abiodun said something about a “distinguished career.”

I invite these men to examine the record.

Ibrahim’s business career is not one of creation or upliftment.  It is of acquisition and collapse. That is why, for years, his name has circulated in connection with financial disputes, asset issues, indebtedness, investigations, forgery, tax allegations, embezzlement, money laundering, and massive debt recovery proceedings.

Consider: NICON Airways: acquired, collapsed, approximately 300 workers left without wages from May 2007. The National Industrial Court awarded those workers N1.5 billion in 2013. Ibrahim appealed. The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal in 2017.

In 2024, a statement from former staff representatives confirmed that N808.7 million in salary arrears remained unpaid, along with N8.1 million in pension contributions that had been deducted from workers’ salaries but never remitted. Nearly two decades later, that money—their money, taken from their wages—has cruelly not reached them.

Air Nigeria: taken over in 2010, collapsed in 2012. The National Assembly’s own Joint Committee on Aviation stated on the record that the airline was grounded because Ibrahim diverted a N35.5 billion government intervention loan—guaranteed by UBA, funded by the Bank of Industry—into his family company, NICON Investment Limited.

His Finance Director, John Nnorom, a qualified accountant who resigned and was then prosecuted on Ibrahim’s initiative, submitted detailed evidence to a Senate committee in 2016, including the acquisition of Energy Bank of Ghana with Afrexim loan funds registered not in Air Nigeria’s name but in Ibrahim’s personal name. He was later discharged and acquitted. The Senate’s 2014 resolution directing the CBN Governor to recover the aviation funds from Ibrahim was never enforced.

NICON Insurance: acquired, gutted. Former managers say Ibrahim fired 85 per cent of staff, and the company went from national market dominance to less than one per cent of its pre-privatisation client base. In 2016, the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) sealed its offices for N182.7 million in unremitted taxes.

FIRS filed a 10-count criminal charge against Ibrahim personally—not his company, him—for five years of unpaid taxes totalling N4.86 billion and for producing and presenting forged Tax Clearance Certificates to renew expatriate quota positions for 30 persons. That charge sits in the Federal High Court in Abuja.

In November 2020, the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria seized 12 named properties from Ibrahim over a N69.4 billion debt. AMCON said publicly that Ibrahim and his companies had been “recalcitrant and unenthusiastic” about repayment despite multiple exit opportunities. The court filing—Suit No. FHL/L/CL/776/2016—was filed in 2016. It took four years to obtain the seizure order. How much of that N69.4 billion has been recovered?

Remember the famous NewsWatch magazine?  Until a court stopped him, Ibrahim was the one who tried to rip it out of the soil and throw it away.

In New York, Aersale Inc. dragged Ibrahim to the US District Court, claiming over $7.68 million for breach of aircraft lease agreements in which he had signed as personal guarantor. In 2012, EFCC agents interrogated him for hours; sources at the time reported he had burned documents before the interrogation and sustained visible injuries in the process.

These are the credentials of the man being promoted by Aso Rock to represent Nigeria at the UN.

Now consider the environment. The Nigerian Mission’s anaemic website is a monument to institutional abandonment. Its most recent UNGA session archive stops at the 72nd session, which ended in 2018. There are no recent events or records, and no evidence of a functioning communications operation.

The building, just one block from the UN, is, in effect, a ghost. Into this ghost is Nigeria thrusting an operative who will abandon hundreds of unpaid workers, billions in court-ordered debts, criminal charges, a burned archive of documents, and the wreckage of at least three institutions that Nigerians trusted.  What message will he bring to the world: that he represents Nigerians?

The timing makes it worse. Ibrahim travels to the media capital of the world that already knows Bola Tinubu by name.  Sadly, that is not from reporting great success on the UN podium of conquering insecurity in Nigeria or in implementing the Sustainable Development Goals.  Instead, it is from the federal courthouse in Chicago, where the drug scandal of 1993 is a matter of permanent public record and in a country where Tinubu is begging to hide his records because they would do him “irreparable harm.”  International journalists know about these ghosts.  And when they want to ask about them, who will answer for Nigeria?

Apparently: Jimoh Ibrahim.

This is not governance. It is the re-circulation of embarrassment. It is what happens when a government has contempt for its own people, when it trusts that outrage will not last, that the congratulatory messages will drown out the record.

Ibrahim’s appointment is not a diplomatic strategy. It is a confession: that in the grotesque estimation of this administration, Nigeria’s seat at the world’s most important table is a reward to be bestowed, not a trust to be honoured.

I have written previously about the comatose state of the Nigerian Mission to the UN. I write again now, with the same outrage—and something heavier than outrage. I write with grief. The grief of a country that keeps asking its citizens to lower their self-esteem. The grief of workers in Abuja waiting for wages since 2007. The grief of a continent that could be represented with distinction.

Only last week, in front of an international TV audience, presidential adviser Daniel Bwala infamously demonstrated the pain and humiliation of a compromised operative being ruthlessly disrobed.  Several of the ambassadors that the Tinubu government is currently trying to shoehorn into relevance are known to be of the same mould of hypocrisy and charlatanism. Nigerians are being systematically desensitised to shame by a government with a sense neither of smell nor of vision.

This is an insult in real time.  It is irreparable harm to Nigeria.

Sonala Olumhense

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine

The thought returned to me during a quiet moment of reflection after signing off on the maiden edition of The Sunday Stew. It triggered the memory of a conversation from many years ago with Professor Jibril Aminu, the elder statesman who passed away on 5th June 2025, in Abuja at the age of 85. In the days following his death, many tributes recalled his intellectual brilliance. Those who knew him in his student years often spoke of his exceptional performance at the medical school of the University of Ibadan. I was told that he had set an academic record there that remained unmatched for many years. Whether that record still stands today I cannot say with certainty, but his reputation for academic brilliance has certainly endured.

My awareness of him, however, did not begin in medical circles. I cannot remember precisely when his name first entered my consciousness, but I do know that he became Minister of Education the year preceding my admission as a student at the University of Calabar. A year after he was appointed minister, a nationwide controversy erupted over the location of a cross at the Christian chapel of the University of Ibadan. The debate stirred strong opinions across campuses and in the wider public space, reflecting the delicate intersection of faith, identity, and public institutions in Nigeria.

Like many students of that era, I followed the debate closely. His name surfaced repeatedly in the national conversation.

But my earliest personal recollection of someone speaking about him with familiarity came a little later.

It was during our NYSC orientation camp in Zaria, Kaduna State. In the first days of camp, friendships formed quickly, as they often do when young graduates from different parts of the country suddenly find themselves sharing the same uncertain future. One of the friends I made was Sanusi Maiwada, who had studied agriculture or agricultural engineering — I can’t remember precisely — at the University of Sokoto, now Usmanu Danfodiyo University.

We spoke often about what life after national service might look like. Opportunities, ambitions, the usual uncertainties that follow graduation. At one point during one of those conversations, Sanusi mentioned casually that after camp he intended to travel to Lagos to see Professor Jibril Aminu about his future plans. I remember being struck by the ease with which he spoke the name — as though access to a figure of such stature was not unimaginable. This is because at the time we were at the orientation camp, Aminu had left office as minister but remained one of the truly influential Nigerians of the day.

 ​I felt Sanusi Maiwada was very lucky to be associated with a figure of such formidable stature: an ex-minister who remained deeply consequential in the national scheme of things.

 That brief exchange stayed with me. I lost contact with Sanusi Maiwada after NYSC and never learned what became of his plans. But the moment lingered. It was another small thread that kept Professor Aminu present in my awareness long before I would encounter him personally.

Years later, in 2012, that meeting finally happened. I was the Bureau Chief of BusinessDay in Abuja when my colleague, Tony Ailemen, arranged an interview with Professor Aminu at his Asokoro residence. By then, he had left active public life, having held a succession of roles that exposed him to the breadth of governance and academia: Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission (NUC), Vice Chancellor, University of Maiduguri; Minister of Education, Ambassador to the United States, and Senator of the Federal Republic. He had seen Nigeria from the corridors of policy and politics, and he had seen the world — engaging with foreign leaders, international institutions, and global challenges.

That meeting revealed a man whose insight was shaped not by speculation, but by decades of experience in public service and leadership at the highest levels. He remained a widely respected figure in the then-ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and commanded considerable regard in his home state of Adamawa. Yet despite his stature, he carried his perspective lightly: measured, observant, and quietly piercing.

During that interview, against the backdrop of global natural disasters — Hurricane Katrina in the United States, famine in Ethiopia, the harshness of the Sahara Desert, earthquakes in Haiti, Japan, and Turkey, and typhoons in the Philippines — he made a remark that has lingered with me ever since: while other nations contend with nature’s fury, we in Nigeria, largely spared from these hazards, somehow manage to create disasters for ourselves.

Delivered quietly, almost conversationally, the observation was unmistakably clear.

Across the world, geography dictates many of the challenges nations must confront. Japan lives with earthquakes powerful enough to reshape coastlines, as seen in the 2011 Tōhoku Earthquake and Tsunami which triggered the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. In the Caribbean, the 2010 Haiti Earthquake reduced entire sections of Port-au-Prince to rubble. More recently, the 2023 Turkey–Syria Earthquakes flattened neighbourhoods across southern Turkey and northern Syria. Across the Pacific, the Philippines regularly braces against storms like Typhoon Haiyan — among the most powerful tropical cyclones ever recorded.

In Africa, the famine in Ethiopia in the 1980s claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, while the harshness of the Sahara Desert shapes both the lives and survival strategies of communities and countries across the Sahel. In these cases, nature imposes hardship, yet human ingenuity and adaptation often determine survival.

 In Nigeria, by contrast, the crises we face are largely self-imposed, avoidable, and yet persist due to governance failures and neglect. These are nations and regions where nature itself periodically rebels; Nigeria, in contrast, faces no such geological hostility.

We sit outside the world’s major earthquake belts. We have no active volcanoes threatening cities. Hurricanes rarely form along our coastline. Nature, in many respects, has been generous to Nigeria.

Yet our country often operates under the shadow of permanent disaster. Not because the earth trembles beneath us, but because we repeatedly create tremors ourselves.

Our most persistent crises are not natural. They are manufactured: kidnapping, insurgency, banditry, corruption, collapsing infrastructure, policy inconsistency, and institutional fragility have become recurring emergencies in our country. None of these emerged from the soil. They emerged from decisions.

Consider insecurity. Across large parts of our country, farmers abandon fertile land out of fear. Highways that should connect markets instead generate anxiety. Communities negotiate daily life under the shadow of armed groups. This is not the work of nature. It is the consequence of institutional weakness and leadership failure.

The same pattern appears in infrastructure. Countries prone to earthquakes enforce strict engineering standards because the ground beneath them cannot be trusted. Nigeria faces no seismic threat. Yet buildings collapse with disturbing frequency. The earth did not move. Standards did.

Even flooding, one of the few natural hazards we occasionally experience, often reveals deeper governance failures. Blocked drainage systems, chaotic urban planning, and construction on waterways transform ordinary rainfall into catastrophe. The rain falls everywhere. But disaster follows where planning disappears.

The observation Professor Aminu made that afternoon still lingers. It was a simple remark, delivered almost in passing. Yet the longer one reflects on it, the more unsettling its truth becomes. Nigeria is not threatened by earthquakes. We are not battered by hurricanes. Nature, in many respects, has been kind to us. Yet we often behave like a nation permanently under disaster.

In the next edition of The Sunday Stew, we will take a deeper look at this paradox — examining, one by one, some of the most significant self-inflicted and man-made crises that continue to hold the country back. Because if our greatest problems are indeed created by us, then understanding them clearly may be the first step toward finally overcoming them.

Don’t miss it.

Stay seasoned.  See you next Sunday.

•Max Amuchie, CEO of Sundiata Post, writes The Sunday Stew, a weekly syndicated column on faith, character, and the forces that shape society, with a focus on Nigeria and Africa in a global context.

— X @MaxAmuchie | Email: [email protected], +234(0)8053069436

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.

By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

When the then Chief of Army Staff, Ibrahim Babangida – a two-star general – turned the page on the military regime of Muhammadu Buhari in the last week of August 1985, political opposition was largely decimated in Nigeria. A mixture of brute force, regime nihilism, and carefully targeted lynching sold as a fight against rampant corruption had combined to quieten the coalition of restiveness comprising the press; organized labour and students; and politicians.

The only active constituency of opposition left were professionals, comprising some doctors in the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) and lawyers in the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA). For Ibrahim Babangida, his route to regime longevity lay in co-opting both. From the medical profession, he persuaded Olikoye Ransome-Kuti, a respected pediatrician with activist pedigree, to become his Health Minister. Professor Ransome-Kuti was the elder brother of rebel musician, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. Their other brother, Bekolari Ransome-Kuti, was one of the leaders of the protesting medical doctors.

The NBA was by far the most effective of the critical outposts in the country but it embodied two mutually contradictory camps. The president of the association at the time was Bola Ajibola, an Egba blueblood, who led the association in articulating activist opposition against the default of the Buhari regime to military tribunals in defiance of liberal notions of fair hearing before civilian judges. As “Special Military Tribunals increasingly replaced law courts”, Prince Bola Ajibola emerged as the unlikely face and voice of a constituency of enlightened values.

In opposition to Ajibola from within the Bar, a former national Public Secretary of the NBA, Chief Gani Fawehinmi, threw his considerable support behind the campaign of the Buhari regime against what was widely perceived as plunder by the civilian politicians whom it overthrew. For Gani, radical measures were required to course correct from the path to which the politicians had set the country. As far as he was concerned, the steps by the Buhari regime were consistent with that and deserved support.

This high-profile tension within the NBA on such an existential issue of regime survival added spice to the moment and, somewhat ironically, bolstered the association’s public standing. Ibrahim Babangida could not resist the allure of the gold-dust of the NBA for his mission of regime usurpation.

In one deft move, he decided to decapitate the association by making Bola Ajibola an offer to be his Attorney-General of the Federation and Justice Minister at a time that he knew Ajibola could not resist. After all, it was an invitation to undo the mess for which he led the NBA to an irretrievable falling out with Muhammadu Buhari. Ebele Nwokoye, the first Vice-President of the association served out the remainder of Ajibola’s tenure before being elected president for a two-year tenure until August 1987.

For the next six years, Bola Ajibola held sway in one of the most consequential tenures in the office of the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice. When Taslim Elias died in August 1991 while serving as a judge of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, Babangida nominated Ajibola to serve out the remainder of the term of Judge Elias. To replace Ajibola as Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, he returned and captured yet another president of the NBA, Clement Akpamgbo.

In succession to Clement Akpamgbo, Priscilla Kuye, then first Vice-President of the association, stepped up, becoming the first (and thus far the only) female president in the history of the NBA. The association was due to elect a new president the following year and Priscilla Kuye threw her hat into the ring for an elective mandate as president in her own right. It did not materialize.

The 1992 conference in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, at which the association was to conduct the election disintegrated in disarray and pandemonium amidst fisticuffs, ex parte court orders and allegations of wielded firearms. It was the year before the election that was supposed to exit the military from power in Nigeria.

A secret post-mortem convened by the senior-most surviving past-president of the NBA at the time, Frederick Rotimi Alade (FRA) Williams, identified several structural factors in the crisis, including polarization in the association, increased (political and security) interest in the office of NBA president, and “external influence”. Among the immediate causes, the report – which was never officially published – listed “too many participants” and “over-use of money” in the contest for the NBA presidency as well as what it called “election fever.”

Underlying the recommendations of the report was a sense that participation in the leadership elections of the association should be a privilege of longevity and networks at the Bar not a right of all members. At that time, there were fewer than 20,000 lawyers – both living and dead –  on the Roll of lawyers in Nigeria. It advised the NBA to consider a system described as “assured succession” or “hierarchical ascendancy” in which leadership would circulate among a magic circle of male, senior lawyers.

As the association resumed life six years later, participation in elections in the NBA evolved from a mass membership entitlement to a privilege of a small circle of delegates. These comprised the elected officers of the association, members of the National Executive Committee, selected delegates representing the branches pro-rated to the official size of each branch, as well as Life Benchers and Senior Advocates of Nigeria, SANs. The Association felt captured.

One decade later, the movement to open up elections in the NBA to every member caught fire on the back of new opportunities created by the digital revolution. It was increasingly a matter of when not if. In 2015, Augustine Alegeh, the president of the association, achieved a constitutional amendment mandating digital elections based on universal suffrage for every member of the association who meets the criterion of paying the annual Bar Practising Fees.

Since then, elections in the NBA have become even more intensely contested and more controversial too. A population used to opaque, backroom deals and tactile politics showed up as deeply suspicious of elections decided in the ether. A segment of senior lawyers in the association have since advocated a return to the discredited delegate or indirect system of leadership election and has gone as far as to blame the “so called universal suffrage” for  “indiscipline at the bar.”

2026 is another election year in the NBA. Already, two different judges of the High Court of Oyo State in Ibadan have issued orders restraining the NBA’s electoral processes.

One suspiciously audacious court order among the two effectively requires the association to only recognize one aspirant for the contest for the presidency of the NBA, on the ground that he is the “consensus candidate” of a body called “Egbe Amofin”, a society of lawyers of Yoruba descent. His name is Muyiwa Akinboro and his denial that he is desperately shopping for a judge to impose him as president of the NBA in 2026 increasingly rings hollow. By a rotational arrangement written into the NBA constitution, the presidency of the association this year will come from the old Western Nigeria.

There are a few problems with this order though. The “Egbe Amofin” is unknown to the constitutional organs of the NBA. Relatively few voters in the association belong to the body. The order of the High Court in Ibadan will subsist until 15 April, by which date the association will be struggling for time to accomplish an incident-free transition.

The idea of a president of the NBA imposed by order of a high court judge with no regard for the franchise of the members is no longer such a far-fetched proposition. Of course, that will guarantee an end to the NBA as we know it.

The points of coincidence with the Port Harcourt debacle of 1992 are tantalizing. It is the year preceding a national election in 2027. Externalities are very palpable. A woman is the ring as a leading candidate for the presidency of the association. Once again, court orders are in the picture, essentially to frustrate her. It may not be 1992 all over again but it sure does feel like, for the NBA, the more things change, the more they remain the same.

A lawyer and a teacher, Odinkalu can be reached at [email protected]

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.