Odinkalu quits NBA electoral committee over debt

A member of the Electoral Committee of the Nigerian Bar Association, Prof. Chidi Odinkalu, has resigned his membership of the committee. He linked the decision to delay in payment of the voting platform providers who administered the association’s 2022 elections.

He stated that one year after the election was conducted, the association had yet to pay a balance of N5.4m, out of the N18m charged for the conduct of the election.

In a letter addressed to the President, NBA, Yakubu  Maikyau, SAN, the ex-chairman of, National Human Rights Commission, stated that the NBA refusal to pay the contractor was evidence that the next cycle of the association’s elections in 2024 would end in frustration.

The letter reads in part, “It has been my privilege over the past 19 months to serve on the Electoral Committee of the Nigerian Bar Association, the committee delivered the NBA’s leadership elections nearly one year ago, on 16 July 2022.”

He stated that the lingering debt damages the commercial and organisational credibility of the ECNBA and its membership, adding that the voting platform providers who administered the 2022 general elections cannot now be enthusiastic about further dealings with a chronic debtor.

It noted, “In the period since the introduction of digital voting in our association in 2016, elections into offices in the NBA have become dependent on data and its governance.

“In a country in which elections are notoriously in disrepute, the NBA has a duty to set high standards in the preparation and conduct of its elections. For reasons that I outline below, I have come to the plain conclusion that this aspiration for a credible election in the next cycle of elections in our association in 2024 now faces a clear and present risk of foreseeable frustration.

“In the light of this painful conclusion, I have reconsidered my membership of the ECNBA and hereby tender my resignation from the committee with effect from 10 July, 2023. The integrity of the NBA’s elections is fundamentally dependent on the credibility of two things: the voting platform (interface) and the membership data.

“The former is outsourced, while the NBA provides the latter to the ECNBA. For the 2022 elections, ECNBA contracted the voting service provision for the sum of N18m. The organs of the NBA approved this sum as part of the budget for the election. As I write, N12.6m of this sum has so far been paid. One year after the elections took place, we still owe the provider N5.4m, representing 30 per cent of the agreed sum.’’