The former 2nd Vice-President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Monday Ubani, Esq has bared his mind on the upcoming elections of the NBA slated for July this year.
Monday Ubani In a chat with
Legaldeskng said “Well the pandemic has put a question mark as to whether the NBA as a body is ready for the election or not. Before the pandemic, the Electoral Committee had been appointed at the last NEC meeting and they were ready to roll out their program for the election before the crisis. However, I learnt that they are still going on with the preliminaries like employment of the ICT partners for the electoral process and giving out forms to the contestants to indicate interest in the various offices that will be vacant this year.”

According to Ubani, e-voting was employed in the last two of the NBA “but unfortunately, we ended up in court after the results were announced. Thereafter everyone has become very sceptical of the integrity of the e-voting process in our electoral contest. People are suggesting that we should, perhaps allow branches to conduct and turn in results to a central server by amending our constitution and by-law to accommodate that new reality. The efficacy and possibility of such process is clearly uncertain and maybe beset with its own problems and peculiarities, the effect of which no one can predict with certainty.”

He said if not for the controversy that trailed the previous e-voting system, he would have supported same. To him, what I’d needed now is transparency in the whole process.

The statement reads in part:

“Honestly if not for the controversy that the two e-voting system have generated, I would have, with boldness still recommend the e-voting system but with a suggestion that a radical restructuring of the entire process be employed with overall objective of integrity and transparency imbued in the system. In other words, the entire system from beginning to the end must be clothed with transparency and integrity. I was part of the last executive of the national body and our suggestion that the representatives of the contestants be allowed to observe the entire process from voting to collation and to announcement of the results was turned down and we were not surprised that the election result ended up in court as we had predicted.

“If we must get it right this time around, the selection of the ICT firm for the process must be transparent right up to the announcement of the result. Anything to the contrary will breed the usual crisis we have been known for some years in Nigeria, as a body that cannot conduct free, fair and credible election bereft of controversy.

“Anyone who was a witness of the last two e-voting elections of NBA will jump to the suggestion of importing external firm to handle the process since the two previous ones that ended in controversy were handled by Nigerian ICT firms. However, the matter is not as simple as that. Are we sure who is bringing the ICT firm to Nigeria? Can we afford the fees which may be denominated in dollars which ultimately will affect our treasury? Is not a big shame that in a country of over 200 million Nigerians, we cannot get a credible ICT firm that can conduct a credible election free from any allegation of manipulation and rigging for NBA? It sounds alarming!”

Ubani opined that “we have used the two previous elections to learn the rope hopefully, the current one should be conducted with integrity and credibility as the central objective.”

He Urges the current Electoral Committee to be neutral in the electoral process

“The current leadership and the Electoral Committee should ensure neutrality to birth an electoral process that will satisfy the yearnings of all the participants and erase shame and dishonor that elections in Nigeria generally have been associated with.

“History beckons on the current Electoral Committee chaired by the learned senior advocate of Nigeria to break the vicious jinx of electoral crisis in NBA, the largest body of lawyers in the Continent. It is possible if we are determined to achieve that. Everyone has a role to play.” he concluded