A group of Nigerian lawyers under the aegis of Reform the NBA has called for an independent audit and rerun of the 2026 Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) presidential election, citing concerns over the credibility of the July 18 poll.

The campaign, launched on Tuesday, August 11, said the issues surrounding the election should be resolved through evidence and independent verification rather than competing claims.

The Electoral Committee of the Nigerian Bar Association (ECNBA) had acknowledged that voting did not commence as scheduled due to technical problems, including database connection failure, authentication changes, server instability and an authentication verification defect.

According to Reform the NBA, the ECNBA also disclosed that voting became temporarily impossible for several hours before the election was suspended and moved to an alternative platform. The electoral committee attributed the disruption to coordinated cyber attacks.

However, the campaign said the claim should be independently verified through a technical and forensic audit to determine the cause of the disruption and establish whether the electoral records support the declared result.

The lawyers also raised concerns over voter participation, noting that only 26,184 of the 82,172 registered voters participated in the election, representing a turnout of 31.86 per cent.

The campaign, however, cautioned against automatically describing the 56,107 members who did not participate as either apathetic or disenfranchised.

“The question is not simply who did not vote. It is how many eligible members were actually able to vote,” the campaign said.

Reform the NBA proposed four reforms for future NBA elections, including independent certification of the voting platform before elections, full-volume authentication testing, a clearly published protocol for handling platform failures and enforceable consequences for electoral committees or service providers that fail to meet technical and procedural standards.

The campaign said the proposed measures were aimed at preventing future NBA elections from becoming disputes over the credibility of the electoral process.

“This is not about one candidate. It is about the NBA and the integrity of the system through which its members choose their leaders,” the group said.

The campaign said it would publish further information in the coming weeks on the July 18 election and its proposals for institutional reform.