Call for restoration of NIN Voter Authentication
Two candidates for the office of President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Lateef Omoyemi Akangbe, SAN, and Aare Olumuyiwa Akinboro, SAN, FCIArb (UK), Life Bencher, have written separate letters to the Electoral Committee of the NBA (ECNBA) raising what they described as grave concerns about the appointment of Mikrodigital Connect as the Electronic Voting Service Provider and Thanelinc Nigeria Limited as the Data Protection Officer for the July 20, 2026, NBA national elections, and about the committee’s abandonment of a mutual agreement to integrate the National Identification Number (NIN) into the voter authentication process.
While both candidates raised substantially similar concerns about the corporate governance, competence, and track record of both service providers, their remedies differed. Akangbe, in a six-page letter dated June 8, 2026, requested detailed explanations, disclosure of bid documents and evaluation criteria, and the restoration of NIN-based authentication. Akinboro, in a four-page letter dated June 10, 2026, went further by demanding the “immediate disengagement” of both companies within three days and the commencement of a fresh procurement process.
The letters, which together constitute the most comprehensive challenge yet to the ECNBA’s election preparations from candidates directly affected by the committee’s decisions, raise concerns that span corporate form, statutory compliance, technical capacity, data protection, procurement transparency, and the security architecture of the voting platform.
Both candidates commissioned independent due diligence exercises at the Corporate Affairs Commission following the ECNBA’s May 31 announcement of the appointed service providers.
Akangbe’s letter set out the CAC findings in forensic detail, confirming facts that had been previously reported but adding new specificity. He stated that the CAC Status Report issued on June 3, 2026, confirmed that Mikrodigital Connect is registered as a business name, not a limited liability company, with Business Name Number 3022299 and Mr Shamsuddeen Haruna as its sole proprietor. Its principal business activity is broadly described as “Information Service Activities,” with no specific competence in electronic voting, election management technology, or large-scale identity verification reflected on the register.
Most critically, Akangbe provided the precise timestamps showing when Mikrodigital paid its six years of CAC annual return arrears: the 2020 annual return was paid on May 31, 2026, at 22:06; the 2021 return on June 1, 2026, at 11:50; the 2022 return at 11:56; the 2023 return at 12:04; the 2024 return at 12:20; and the 2025 return at 12:30, all “in the days immediately preceding or coinciding with the announcement of the appointment.”
Akangbe described this pattern as “a serious governance red flag” and stated: “An entity that has, on the face of the register, been in continuous default of its statutory annual returns for six consecutive years, and which only regularised its position in the hours immediately surrounding the award of a contract of this importance, cannot be said to demonstrate the standard of institutional discipline and regulatory hygiene that a national election service provider must meet.”
“The timing speaks for itself. It will inevitably invite, and deserve, the question whether the appointment preceded basic statutory compliance, or whether basic statutory compliance was an afterthought triggered by the appointment,” Akangbe added.
Akangbe raised a concern that has not been previously highlighted in the Mikrodigital controversy: the legal implications of the company being registered as a business name rather than a limited liability company.
“A sole proprietorship is not a separate legal personality. The undertaking, the liabilities, the contractual obligations and the data protection responsibilities all rest personally on Mr Haruna,” Akangbe stated.
He warned that in an exercise where the NBA would entrust “the integrity of a national election, the voter roll, the credentials of every member who votes, and the technical infrastructure of the count to a single contracting party, the absence of corporate form is not a technicality. It is a material risk to the Association.”
“Should anything go wrong, the recourse available to the NBA and to its members would be markedly different from, and weaker than, the recourse that would be available against a properly capitalised limited liability company,” Akangbe added.
Akinboro’s letter echoed these concerns, noting that Mikrodigital Connect “has no functional website that shows that it is an active organisation. There is no information as to its experience, personnel, competencies, track record and jobs executed in the past.”
Both candidates stated that their inquiries could not identify any prior engagement in which Mikrodigital Connect independently delivered a secure electronic election at the scale of the NBA elections. Akangbe noted: “The NBA Elections are not a small undertaking. They involve tens of thousands of geographically dispersed voters with varying levels of technological familiarity, real-time identity verification, audit trails capable of withstanding judicial scrutiny, and a result that must be defensible against any subsequent challenge.”
He reminded the ECNBA of the consequences of choosing the wrong service provider: “The history of our own elections in 2016 and 2018, and 2024, which were mired in controversy, with one resulting in litigation and the other in arrests and prosecution, ought to remind us that the consequences of choosing the wrong service provider are neither hypothetical nor recoverable after the fact.”
Akinboro’s letter raised the most explosive allegation in the controversy so far. He stated that during a bid defence session, Mikrodigital’s CEO Shamsuddeen Haruna confirmed to a consultant representing Akangbe’s campaign that he had “been part of the 2024 election of the NBA and in possession of the data of over 70,000 lawyers.” When questioned further about why he retained such data, Haruna reportedly stated “that he has not been disengaged.”
Akinboro noted that this revelation was not disclosed by Mikrodigital in its bid documents and was “only extracted upon questioning.” He further noted that the 2024 NBA election was officially conducted by INNITS and ELECTION BUDDY, “which are neither Mikrodigital Connect nor Shamsuddeen Haruna, thereby raising the question as to what role Shamsuddeen Usman and his Mikrodigital Connect actually played in the last election.”
Akinboro then posed a question that carries significant implications for both the 2024 and 2026 elections: “Could it be that Shamsuddeen Usman and his Mikrodigital Connect were the unseen hands behind the shadows that determined the outcome of the 2024 national elections? This, no doubt calls for a detailed investigation to avoid leaving the elections in the hands of an entity that is not only incompetent but also conflicted.”
Both candidates acknowledged that Thanelinc Nigeria Limited, unlike Mikrodigital, maintains an active CAC status with up-to-date annual returns. However, they raised substantive concerns about its fitness for the Data Protection Officer role.
Akangbe noted that Thanelinc has an authorised share capital of 1,000,000 ordinary shares with only two directors and shareholders, Ms Olufunmilayo Emore and Mr Ogho Emore, holding 500,000 shares each. Its registered objects “do not include data protection, privacy compliance or election integrity work” but describe “a general business support, training, mobile and web applications, and general trading enterprise.”
He stated that there was “no indication on the public record that the company is registered with the Nigeria Data Protection Commission as a Data Protection Compliance Organisation, nor any indication of certification in the specialised domain that the role of Data Protection Officer for a national professional election requires.”
Akangbe emphasised the specialised nature of the role: “The role of the Data Protection Officer in a national election is not a generic compliance assignment. It calls for demonstrated experience with high-volume processing of sensitive personal data, with breach response at scale, with cross-border data flow assessment where cloud infrastructure is involved, and with the kind of contemporaneous, defensible record-keeping that any subsequent regulatory or judicial inquiry will demand. None of this is evident on the face of the available material.”
Akinboro similarly stated: “There is also no evidence of its experience, track record or previous involvement in tasks or assignments involving large scale data management and data protection.”
Both candidates raised what they described as a material deviation between what was agreed at a candidates’ meeting and what the ECNBA subsequently published.
At the candidates’ meeting convened by the ECNBA on May 25, 2026, the committee, the candidates, and other stakeholders reached a “clear and shared understanding” that the National Identification Number (NIN) would be integrated into the voter authentication process. The understanding was reached in the context of identity fraud risks witnessed in previous NBA elections and the need for layered authentication so that no single compromised credential could deliver a fraudulent vote.
However, the Step-by-Step Electronic Voting Guide subsequently published by the ECNBA makes no mention of NIN. The authentication process relies solely on the Supreme Court Enrolment Number (SCN) and a standard One-Time Password (OTP) sent to a registered contact.
Akangbe described the omission as “not a drafting omission. It is a substantive change to the security posture of the election.”
He explained why the current framework is vulnerable: “The SCN is a professional registration number. It is not a secret. It appears on call-to-bar records, on practice documents, on stamps and seals, on email signatures and on countless filings that pass through court registries every day. A determined bad actor seeking to compromise the election can obtain SCN numbers in volume with comparatively little effort.”
Without NIN, he warned, “the framework reduces to a one-factor system in any case where the OTP delivery channel is compromised.” He noted that OTPs are “routinely compromised through SIM swap fraud, through social engineering, through compromised email accounts, and through interception.”
“NIN ties authentication to a biometrically anchored national identity. A person attempting to vote with another lawyer’s SCN, even if they have somehow received that lawyer’s OTP, cannot easily satisfy a NIN-bound check. Dropping that layer therefore does not simplify the process. It weakens it materially,” Akangbe stated.
Akinboro added that the SCN “can be easily harvested by dubious characters to manipulate the election” and described the return to SCN-OTP authentication as “a clear reversal to the flawed authentication process that characterised our previous elections and created a lot of trust deficit.”
Akinboro’s demands were direct and time-bound. He demanded within three days the immediate disengagement of both Mikrodigital Connect and Thanelinc Nigeria Limited, the commencement of a process to engage competent and experienced replacement service providers, and the integration of NIN in the voter authentication process in line with the May 25 agreement. His letter was copied to the NBA President, the Chairman of the Board of Trustees, the Chairman of the Body of Benchers, and the Attorney General of the Federation.
Akangbe’s demands were more detailed but equally firm. He requested the ECNBA provide the full technical and corporate proposals submitted by both companies, the criteria applied in evaluating those proposals and the comparative assessment of competing bids, particulars of any prior elections of comparable scale conducted by either entity, confirmation of Thanelinc’s registration with the Nigeria Data Protection Commission, and the indemnity, insurance, and performance security arrangements under the engagement contracts. He also requested written confirmation of whether the NIN integration remains extant, clarification of whether it was deferred, dropped, or rendered impossible by a technical constraint, and immediate steps to restore NIN authentication or convene a further candidates’ meeting.
Akangbe requested a substantive written response within five working days given the closeness of the election date.
Akangbe concluded his letter with a warning that carried the weight of a legal practitioner who understands that elections can end up in court.
“The matters set out above are not academic. The corporate form, compliance history and track record of the appointed service providers, and the authentication architecture published in the Step-by-Step Guide, will be among the very first matters scrutinised in the event of any post-election dispute. It is far better and wiser that they be addressed now, openly and on the record, than being addressed later in litigation,” Akangbe stated.
The letter added: “I have no wish to obstruct the work of the Committee, nor to inflame what is already a tense moment in the life of the Association. I do, however, have an obligation, both as a candidate and as a member of the Bar, to insist that the elections of 20 July 2026 are conducted on a footing that the membership of this Association, and the courts of this country if it should come to that, will recognise as fit for purpose.”
Neither the ECNBA Chairman Aham Ejelam, SAN, nor any representative of the committee has publicly responded to either letter as at the time of this report. Mikrodigital Connect and Thanelinc Nigeria Limited have not publicly commented on the concerns raised by the candidates.
The NBA election is scheduled for July 20, 2026, approximately 40 days away. The concerns raised by two of the three presidential candidates place the ECNBA under significant pressure to either demonstrate that its procurement process and authentication framework are
defensible, or to take corrective action before the election proceeds on a foundation that the candidates have publicly declared to be inadequate.
In this article