By Innocent Anaba

AS the Nigerian Bar Association, NBA annual conference  kicks-off in Abuja, today, one of the presidential candidates in the just concluded elections, Chief Arthur Obi Okafor, SAN, has urged the out-going President, Mr Abubakar Mahmoud, SAN, to fulfil his promise of conducting an independent post-elections audit of the results.

File: Lawyers

The National Executive Committee, NEC, of the NBA, yesterday,  ratified the election, which produced Mr. Paul Usoro, SAN, as President-elect just as Usoro received the Certificate of Return from the Chairman of Electoral Committee, Prof. Auwalu  Yadudu.

The NBA NEC ratified the elections following a motion moved by Chief Solomon Umoh, SAN and seconded by Mr Ferdinand Orbih, which was unanimously carried.

Recall that the election won by Usoro, SAN, had been condemned by Okafor and another presidential candidate, Prof Ernest Ojukwu, SAN, who alleged that the election conducted online was rigged.

Meanwhile, Okafor, in a letter to Mahmoud, calling for an audit of the election results, said: “Further to the controversy surrounding the recently conducted NBA elections, it has become imperative that the independent and participatory forensic post-election audit promised by the leadership of the NBA in the publication entitled ‘Press Statement by NBA on the 2018 national officers election,’ be conducted without further delay.

“This audit is necessary in order to address the several malpractices and irregularities including but not limited to voter identity theft by way of the use of fraudulent email addresses hosted on malicious websites such as firemail.cc, airmail.cc and openmailbox.org, through which over 1500 votes were cast, as well as inability of several voters to receive their passwords due to fraudulent alteration of phone numbers/emails and interception of passwords.’’