By Dayo Benson

The Nigerian Bar Association (NBA),guidelines for its forth coming election in July has continued to generate controversies as lawyers in the Lagos Branch of the Association have faulted the guidelines recently released by the NBA Electoral Committee  saying that they are riddled with many irregularities that will jeopardise the wishes of the electorate.

Members of the branch kicked against stipulations in the Election Guidelines requiring branches to submit bank tellers “as evidence of payment of annual practicing fee as at 1st April, 2014.”

According to the Lagos NBA, in a resolution signed by the branch Chairman Alex Muoka and Publicity Secretary Abdulrasheed Ibrahim, such requirement is unnecessary “as full and detailed information of all lawyers and all branch members who have paid practising fee as at 31st of March, 2014 is already in the custody of the NBA National Secretariat.”

The lawyers expressed anger  over  the requirement in the Election Guidelines which mandated every NBA registered branch to submit receipts as evidence of payment of branch dues and levies as at 1st April, 2014. They said that the requirement was not only “unconstitutional” as it was not contained in NBA Constitution 2009, but is a ploy to “disenfranchise branches and voters.”

The “Premier Bar” also berated the emergence of some new branches during the election period, warning that “no branch inaugurated in 2014 shall be allowed to send delegates to vote at the 2014 NBA Elections.”

Worried that the opaque nature of the guidelines concerning the publication of the Delegates’ Register touches on the integrity of the electoral process and would jeopardize credible elections, the members resolved that not only should evidence of payment of practicing fee be published and made available to branches and the Electoral Committee, “the entire list of qualified voters (should) be published by the Electoral Committee not later than one week before the date of the election.”