Oyinkansola Badejo-Okusanya has been declared the winner of the presidential election of the Nigerian Bar Association, the umbrella body for lawyers in the country. Her victory hands her the leadership of one of Nigeria's most influential professional organisations, and she moves to take the reins after a contest that drew several senior figures from the legal profession into the race.
According to the association's electoral committee, Badejo-Okusanya polled 12,317 votes, representing 47.18 per cent of the total votes cast. That put her comfortably ahead of her closest challenger, Lateef Akangbe, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, who secured 7,934 votes, or 30.39 per cent, in the ballot for the top office of the bar.
The election was conducted through electronic voting that ran for 24 hours, from the early hours of Saturday until 7:34 a.m. on Sunday, when the exercise was formally concluded. According to the real time status of the poll, there were 82,172 registered voters, of whom 26,184 cast their ballots, giving an overall turnout of 31.86 per cent in the contest for the association's national offices.
Badejo-Okusanya becomes the second female president of the association, and she described her election as a collective triumph for lawyers. In his own remarks, the outgoing president lamented that some individuals had attempted to hack the system during the process, but said that effort had failed, and he pledged a smooth handover to the newly elected officers even as he acknowledged that the bar was passing through a trying time.
In her first message after emerging winner, the incoming president said her engagements with lawyers across all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory would guide the priorities of her administration. She framed the outcome as a mandate to serve the wider membership rather than any single section of the bar, promising to draw on the concerns she had heard from colleagues around the country.
Striking a conciliatory tone, Badejo-Okusanya congratulated her fellow contestants and called for unity among lawyers in the wake of the vote. She stressed the importance of coming together after a keenly fought election, appealing to those who had backed rival candidates to join her in the work ahead rather than remain divided along the lines of the campaign.
The president-elect also set out the values she said would define her tenure, underlining the need to promote justice, the legal profession and the rule of law. Those themes, long central to the identity of the bar, were placed at the heart of her early remarks as she began to sketch out the direction she intends to take the association.
She pledged to lead with integrity, fairness and accountability, presenting those principles as the standard against which her leadership should be measured. The commitment was aimed at reassuring members that the office would be run transparently, a point she returned to as she addressed the association in the aftermath of her win.
Looking ahead, Badejo-Okusanya said she wanted to build a bar where lawyers can earn better, live better and practise better, before declaring that the work begins now. With the result confirmed, attention turns to how she will translate those pledges into the day to day running of the association and the concerns of its members across the country.