By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu
When the then Chief of Army Staff, Ibrahim Babangida – a two-star general – turned the page on the military regime of Muhammadu Buhari in the last week of August 1985, political opposition was largely decimated in Nigeria. A mixture of brute force, regime nihilism, and carefully targeted lynching sold as a fight against rampant corruption had combined to quieten the coalition of restiveness comprising the press; organized labour and students; and politicians.
The only active constituency of opposition left were professionals, comprising some doctors in the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) and lawyers in the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA). For Ibrahim Babangida, his route to regime longevity lay in co-opting both. From the medical profession, he persuaded Olikoye Ransome-Kuti, a respected paediatrician with activist pedigree, to become his Health Minister. Professor Ransome-Kuti was the elder brother of rebel musician, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. Their other brother, Bekolari Ransome-Kuti, was one of the leaders of the protesting medical doctors.
The NBA was by far the most effective of the critical outposts in the country but it embodied two mutually contradictory camps. The president of the association at the time was Bola Ajibola, an Egba blueblood, who led the association in articulating activist opposition against the default of the Buhari regime to military tribunals in defiance of liberal notions of fair hearing before civilian judges. As “Special Military Tribunals increasingly replaced law courts,” Prince Bola Ajibola emerged as the unlikely face and voice of a constituency of enlightened values.
In opposition to Ajibola from within the Bar, a former national Public Secretary of the NBA, Chief Gani Fawehinmi, threw his considerable support behind the campaign of the Buhari regime against what was widely perceived as plunder by the civilian politicians whom it overthrew. For Gani, radical measures were required to course correct from the path to which the politicians had set the country. As far as he was concerned, the steps by the Buhari regime were consistent with that and deserved support.
This high-profile tension within the NBA on such an existential issue of regime survival added spice to the moment and, somewhat ironically, bolstered the association’s public standing. Ibrahim Babangida could not resist the allure of the gold-dust of the NBA for his mission of regime usurpation.
In one deft move, he decided to decapitate the association by making Bola Ajibola an offer to be his Attorney-General of the Federation and Justice Minister at a time that he knew Ajibola could not resist. After all, it was an invitation to undo the mess for which he led the NBA to an irretrievable falling out with Muhammadu Buhari. Ebele Nwokoye, the first Vice-President of the association served out the remainder of Ajibola’s tenure before being elected president for a two-year tenure until August 1987.
For the next six years, Bola Ajibola held sway in one of the most consequential tenures in the office of the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice. When Taslim Elias died in August 1991 while serving as a judge of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, Babangida nominated Ajibola to serve out the remainder of the term of Judge Elias. To replace Ajibola as Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, he returned and captured yet another president of the NBA, Clement Akpamgbo.
In succession to Clement Akpamgbo, Priscilla Kuye, then first Vice-President of the association, stepped up, becoming the first (and thus far the only) female president in the history of the NBA. The association was due to elect a new president the following year and Priscilla Kuye threw her hat into the ring for an elective mandate as president in her own right. It did not materialize.
The 1992 conference in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, at which the association was to conduct the election disintegrated in disarray and pandemonium amidst fisticuffs, ex parte court orders and allegations of wielded firearms. It was the year before the election that was supposed to exit the military from power in Nigeria.
A secret post-mortem convened by the senior-most surviving past-president of the NBA at the time, Frederick Rotimi Alade (FRA) Williams, identified several structural factors in the crisis, including polarization in the association, increased (political and security) interest in the office of NBA president, and “external influence.” Among the immediate causes, the report – which was never officially published – listed “too many participants” and “over-use of money” in the contest for the NBA presidency as well as what it called “election fever.”
Underlying the recommendations of the report was a sense that participation in the leadership elections of the association should be a privilege of longevity and networks at the Bar not a right of all members. At that time, there were fewer than 20,000 lawyers – both living and dead – on the Roll of lawyers in Nigeria. It advised the NBA to consider a system described as “assured succession” or “hierarchical ascendancy” in which leadership would circulate among a magic circle of male, senior lawyers.
As the association resumed life six years later, participation in elections in the NBA evolved from a mass membership entitlement to a privilege of a small circle of delegates. These comprised the elected officers of the association, members of the National Executive Committee, selected delegates representing the branches pro-rated to the official size of each branch, as well as Life Benchers and Senior Advocates of Nigeria, SANs. The Association felt captured.
One decade later, the movement to open up elections in the NBA to every member caught fire on the back of new opportunities created by the digital revolution. It was increasingly a matter of when not if. In 2015, Augustine Alegeh, the president of the association, achieved a constitutional amendment mandating digital elections based on universal suffrage for every member of the association who meets the criterion of paying the annual Bar Practising Fees.
Since then, elections in the NBA have become even more intensely contested and more controversial too. A population used to opaque, backroom deals and tactile politics showed up as deeply suspicious of elections decided in the ether. A segment of senior lawyers in the association have since advocated a return to the discredited delegate or indirect system of leadership election and has gone as far as to blame the “so called universal suffrage” for “indiscipline at the bar.”
2026 is another election year in the NBA. Already, two different judges of the High Court of Oyo State in Ibadan have issued orders restraining the NBA’s electoral processes.
One suspiciously audacious court order among the two effectively requires the association to only recognize one aspirant for the contest for the presidency of the NBA, on the ground that he is the “consensus candidate” of a body called “Egbe Amofin,” a society of lawyers of Yoruba descent. His name is Muyiwa Akinboro and his denial that he is desperately shopping for a judge to impose him as president of the NBA in 2026 increasingly rings hollow. By a rotational arrangement written into the NBA constitution, the presidency of the association this year will come from the old Western Nigeria.
There are a few problems with this order though. The “Egbe Amofin” is unknown to the constitutional organs of the NBA. Relatively few voters in the association belong to the body. The order of the High Court in Ibadan will subsist until 15 April, by which date the association will be struggling for time to accomplish an incident-free transition.
The idea of a president of the NBA imposed by order of a high court judge with no regard for the franchise of the members is no longer such a far-fetched proposition. Of course, that will guarantee an end to the NBA as we know it.
The points of coincidence with the Port Harcourt debacle of 1992 are tantalizing. It is the year preceding a national election in 2027. Externalities are very palpable. A woman is the ring as a leading candidate for the presidency of the association. Once again, court orders are in the picture, essentially to frustrate her. It may not be 1992 all over again but it sure does feel like, for the NBA, the more things change, the more they remain the same.
A lawyer and a teacher, Odinkalu can be reached at chidi.odinkalu@tufts.edu
