Afam Osigwe Emerges NBA President, Polls Half Of Votes Cast

A Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Afam Osigwe, has emerged as the President of the Nigerian Bar Association after winning its presidential election.

Mr Osigwe, who is a former General Secretary of the NBA between 2014 and 2016, polled 20,435 votes, more than half of the total ballots cast for the presidential position, to defeat his two rivals.

Tobenna Erojikwe came a distant second with 10,998 votes, and another SAN, Chukwuka Ikuazom, who announced withdrawing from the race in the middle of the election on Saturday, came third with 9,018 votes.

The voting by accredited members of the NBA took place electronically between 12 a.m. and 11.59 a.m. on Saturday.

As of the time voting closed, 40,451 votes were tallied for the office of the association’s president with 205 abstentions, according to the results portal updated every minute during the election by the Electoral Committee of the NBA (ECNBA).

Winners also emerged from the elections of nine other national officers.

Zonal representatives of the General Council of the association from the Eastern, Northern and Western zones were also elected.

The election for the president was restricted to eligible candidates from the Eastern zone of the NBA, whose turn it is, under the association’s strict zoning arrangement, to fill the position for the next two years.

The two other regional groups are the Western zone and the Northern zone, which produced the outgoing president in 2022.

A splinter zone, called the Mid-Western zone emerged from the Western region in 2014 to produce Augustine Alegeh, a SAN, as the president.

But the group has since retracted to its low-key status within the Western zone.