By Chief J.S.Okutepa,SAN
Today the 20th of March 2026, I saw and I read the official communication of NBA posted by Stella Charles Akupue Esq, the NBA Director of Communications, conspicously carrying the official campaign slogan of one of those aspiring to lead the Bar as NBA President in the coming NBA elections 2026. Those who read the flier of the forthcoming NBA annual conference 2026 11 days to go will notice what I am saying.
The NBA Director of Communication is a lawyer duly called to the Nigerian Bar in 2012 and she also runs a business known as Legallinkz. The phone she uses for NBA and her business communication carry the picture of this particular aspirant as her display picture with the campaign slogan. NBA Director of Communications has been sharing official materials with this particular aspirant’s face and name on the contact handling of all NBA official information without being called to order.
This gives me and other reasonable minds great concerns and anxious moments.By this act the secretariat is giving publicity to a particular aspirant to the disadvantage of other aspirants. As Director of communication of NBA, she is representing NBA. Deploying official communication of NBA to advertise or promote a particular aspirant to the disadvantanges of others is deeply troubling and dangerous precedent to overlook.
The NBA is not just another association. It is the moral voice of the legal profession, the guardian of due process, and the institutional conscience of the nation. When such a body begins to mirror the very political excesses it is expected to critique—bias, manipulation, ethnic dog-whistling, and the weaponization of process—it risks a catastrophic loss of credibility. A Bar that cannot conduct its own internal affairs with fairness and transparency cannot convincingly demand the same from the state.
Of particular concern to me and many other well meaning lawyers is the conduct of this Director of Communications, whose office ought to embody strict neutrality and professional detachment. The circulation of official materials as seen today in the flier for the 2026 annual conference, that prominently project a particular aspirant—whether by design or indiscretion—amounts to an institutional endorsement masquerading as routine communication. This is not a trivial lapse; it is a fundamental breach of trust.
The communications machinery of the NBA is not a campaign tool, and to deploy it, even subtly, in favour of one candidate is to tilt the playing field and compromise the integrity of the entire process. In matters of this nature, perception is as damning as reality, and the current perception is one of partisanship entrenched at the very heart of the Secretariat.
There is a deeper danger here. By normalizing impunity within its own electoral process, the NBA inadvertently legitimizes the decay it ought to resist in the national political space. The line between the Bar and partisan politics becomes blurred, and with that blur comes a loss of moral authority. The Association begins to look less like a professional body governed by rules and more like a political arena governed by expediency. That is a reputational descent from which recovery is neither easy nor guaranteed.
History is replete with institutions that collapsed not because they lacked rules, but because those entrusted with their preservation chose convenience over conscience. If the leadership continues on this path—where fairness is sacrificed for preference, and neutrality is abandoned for advantage—the long-term consequence will be institutional distrust, internal fragmentation, and the gradual delegitimization of the NBA in the eyes of its own members and the public.
This is, therefore, a moment for sober reflection. The leadership must retrace its steps and restore the primacy of principle over preference. It must understand that the integrity of the process is more important than the outcome of any election. For when the process is corrupted, even victory becomes hollow, and leadership begins under a cloud of doubt.
The warning is simple but stark: if the NBA chooses to act like the very political system it often condemns, it will soon lose the standing to condemn anything at all. And in that loss lies the greatest danger—not just to the Association, but to the justice system it is meant to uphold. Many who read the flier of NBA as circulated on the various platforms can see what I have pointed out. NBA election must not only be free fair and credible, it must be seen to be so and it cannot be seen to be so if the instrumentality of NBA official apparatus is allowed to be openly deployed in favour of one of the aspirants even against the rules and regulations of NBA. Impunity has never produced good results. I just hope we are seeing the danger ahead.
