Defeated presidential candidate in last weekend’s Nigerian Bar Association general election, Joe-Kyari Gadzama, has called for the cancellation of the polls.

In a statement on Wednesday, Gadzama’s campaign group in a statement issued by Garba Gajam and Steven Abar, Director-General and Secretary respectively, said the election, which was conducted via electronic voting, lacked transparency and, as a result, not credible.

Abubakar Mahmoud, the eventual winner got 3,055 votes to defeat Gadzama, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria who polled 2,384 votes.

“We hereby reject the results of the elections and call for the immediate cancellation of the same for failing to be credible, transparent, free and fair, and for failing to comply with the provisions of the NBA Constitution and the Electoral Guidelines.

“We also call for the conduct of fresh Electronic (and not Internet) Elections that will be credible, transparent, free and fair and in compliance with the provisions of the NBA Constitution and the Electoral Guidelines,” the statement read.

Gadzama’s campaign team had accused Augustine Alegeh, the outgoing president, of a “brazen show of preference for and serious capital and human resources investment” into promoting Mahmoud, two days to the election.

However, the outgoing President of the association, Augustine Alegeh, SAN has told Premium Times that the election has been adjudged by members as the best election ever conducted in the history of the NBA.

“We are happy that most of our members are very happy with the conduct of the election,” he said.

“The Electoral Committee of the NBA conducted an election that was adjudged by most of our members to be transparent, free, fair, and by all means the best election ever conducted in the history of the NBA.

“It is not unexpected that Gadzama having lost the election will be bitter. But at the Bar, we are one family, we expect everybody after the election to sheathe their swords and work for the greater interest of the bar.

“When Gadzama also lost the election in 2010, he made similar allegation, that the election was moved to Ibadan just to deprive him of the chance of winning.”

Alegeh said as the president, he only constituted an electoral committee but did not conduct the polls.

“Voters register was ready online long before the election,” he said.

“If you go to INEC election, you have a voters register prepared and people do accreditation on the day of the election. We even started accreditation about a week before voting.

“So as the president of the bar and somebody who is interested in knowledge, I find it very…for want of a better word… very depressing to hear complaints of this nature. There was a voters list prepared, after it was prepared we now got to the stage of accreditation, after accreditation voting.

“And when the accreditation was to end midnight on Friday, voting was to start midnight Friday. Because of complaints of members, accreditation was moved midnight Saturday.

“We had such a robust system that after voting had started, people were still allowed to accredit. But we had a cut off, midnight. And after the accreditation, the total number of accredited voters were displayed,” he said.