NBA ELECTIONS: E-voting or not?

As the Nigerian Bar Association prepare to elect a new leadership to administer the affairs of the association for the next two years, members are torn between e-voting, manual voting or what has been recently described as i-voting (Internet Voting). Some members are not only concerned about the credibility of the voting system but the process towards its actualization.

The opinions below, expressed by two respected members of the association aptly captures the mood and current divides within the bar.

FORMER CHAIRMAN, NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION (NHRC) PROF. CHIDI ODINKALU

“The mechanisms for electing the leadership of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) are outdated, scandal-prone and liable to whimsical capture. He further held as follows: the pay offs for E-voting will be far reaching. They will transform the way we govern our Bar, give the Bar greater legitimacy in monitoring public affairs and ensure better revenues for the NBA.

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Previously, the NBA elected its leadership by a system of delegates drawn from the 100 branches of the Bar with each branch entitled to 10 delegates. If a branch has 100 members or more, it gets an additional delegate for every one hundred members. Also entitled to vote as delegates are the elected officers of the NBA (13 of them), all living lawyers (excluding judges) who are members of the Body of Benchers, Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SANs) and all members of the expanded National Executive Committee (NEC) of the Association.

In all, this electorate at its optimal is less than 2,000‎.‎ The idea of suffrage for delegates alone was intended to reduce the expenses and uncertainties involved with universal suffrage at the Bar.‎ That diagnosis, with the benefit of hindsight, was quite wrong. The problem was not the numbers but the fact that the governance of our Bar was too dependent on government and the elections into leadership at the Bar were too prone to manipulation. These two problems have remained unaddressed.

The flaws inherent in the old method are many. For instance, the NBA’s biennial election conference is a four-day jamboree. On the first day, delegates travel to and arrive at the venue in Abuja. On the second day, the delegates are accredited and addressed by the candidates in a “Manifesto” night. Voting takes place on day three, followed by counting and declaration of results. On the fourth day, most travelling delegates return home. There is no excuse for this arrangement. For most lawyers in single or two-person practice, the delegates’ conference is a waste. The risks of road travel are also enormous. Most delegates travel long distances by mini-buses from their respective branches. Many of these buses are inadequately insured, if at all. Elections at the Bar are one car crash away from being hostage to avoidable tragedy. No amount of “God forbid” or “It is not your portion!” should be allowed to diminish the size of this risk.

‎In all, there is no reason why the Bar should spend four days in organizing elections in which there are fewer than 2,000 voters. If it continues this way, the Bar loses any standing to criticize the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for its well-advertised inefficiencies. Returning credibility to our Bar requires that this situation be reformed urgently. To do so, the NBA must set a target for leadership selection based on universal suffrage; this they have taken a step. ‎The idea of gathering all voters in one place is Mediaeval and must end. In the current security context that we have in Nigeria, it is plainly unsafe. Instead, voting processes at the Bar, including accreditation and balloting, can and should be de-centralised. Current ICT capabilities make this easily manageable.

PUBLICITY SECRETARY OF BOTH THE NBA LAGOS BRANCH, AND OUT OKA IWU (IGBO LAWSOCIETY) EMEKA NWADIOKE

“While the introduction of universal suffrage and electronic voting is a welcome development, implementation has thus far been challenging, to say the least.

“There is seemingly insufficient preparation prior to rolling out the process, leading to a situation whereby the election itself is being conducted essentially as a dummy run which ought to have been concluded long before now. The jury is still out yet on the competence of the ICT Partner to carry through the process in the light of many challenges confronting the elections. While according them with good faith, as things stand, one just has to wait and see how the entire process unfolds.

The argument that Internet voting lacks the necessary safeguards to guarantee free and fair elections must not be dismissed with a wave of hand. The worry is based on empirical evidence, experience and the quest for global best practices in election management.

I doubt that there is any Nigerian lawyer who does not support universal suffrage and electronic voting. However, I also doubt that any lawyer that desires that in doing away with the mischief occasioned by the now rested collegiate system, we breed a worse monstrosity.”