Douglas Ogbankwa Esq., the Convener, The Diversity Coalition, has forwarded an open letter to Mazi Afam Osigwe, the President of the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) calling for some measure of reforms in the compilation of the list of voters for its elections.
Ogbankwa harped “on the need for NBA national to provide qualified voters who has paid their bar practising fees for the year to local branches for elections.
While thanking Afam Osigwe “for making the bar a refuge for the repressed, the oppressed and supressed in our society.”
Ogbankwa also thanked the NBA President for his “tenacity of purpose and firmness in defending the rule of law and not the rule of men” which he added “have re-awakened state actors, that Nigeria is a country guided by laws and not the whims and caprices of leaders.”
The Diversity Coalition Convener also called the attention of Afam Osigwe to “the fact that some branches under the guise of election guidelines, give lawyers conditions that allow some branches to manipulate the voters register.”
Going further, Ogbankwa stressed that “at the national level, what gives you a right to vote is the payment of Bar Practising Fees. The list of those who have paid BPF and are qualified to vote are automated and generated from the data base of the bank. This has made all lawyers who are qualified to vote during the national elections.”
Ogbankwa requested that the NBA national should “provide that list to branches and that should be the list of those that are eligible to vote. Any other list that can be compiled by the local branches can be juggled and manipulated to give a pre -determined end.”
According to Ogbankwa, “the bare faced manipulations of results, which is done at the compilation of names stage, disenfranchises lawyers who they know will not vote for their preferred candidates. There are even unconfirmed reports of non lawyers getting into some local branches voters’ register.”
The Diversity Coalition Convener appealed “you have to save us from this bare faced manipulations and restore the voting confidence, at the branch level. We call on you sir, to provide the register to the local branches as voting should be based on the fact that you are been called to the Bar and that you have paid your bar practising fee for the year.”
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