LAWYERS have spoken on their last election, citing reasons for respecting zoning.
Mr. Augustine Alegeh (SAN), who is from the Midwest Forum, was elected the 27th President, even though the post was zoned to the Western Forum, popularly known as Egbe Amofin. The leaders have also put to rest the fear of Mid-West Bar Forum in the zoning.
The Nigeria bar association (NBA) rotates the Presidency among the Eastern Bar Forum (EBF), the Western Lawyers Forum popularly called the Egbe Amofin and the Arewa Lawyers Forum also called Arewa. Under this arrangement, each zone chooses its candidate and sends the name to others for voting.
The arrangement fared well till the regime of Dr. Olisa Agbakoba (SAN), when agitation for the creation of more zones, began to get attention from Bar leaders. This made Agbakoba to constitute a committee headed by the former Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Alhaji Abdullahi Ibrahim.The submitted its report, but it was not ratified by the then National Executive Committee (NEC) of the NBA before its tenure ended.
The agitation continued under Joseph Bodunrin Daudu (SAN), who called a meeting of the Bar leaders to discuss the issue. The meeting, according to some lawyers, did not take a definite position while others argued that the meeting resolved that the Midwest and Egbe Amofin are one. They were asked to go home to resolve how they would have their slot whenever the Presidency of the Bar comes to the West.
In 2012, the leadership of the Midwest Bar Forum visited Egbe Amofin in Ibadan to discuss this matter and the Egbe Amofin received them warmly, promising to give them their slot in 2020.
The Midwest frowned at this position because, according to them, Egbe Amofin has taken its slots under the regimes of Chief Wole Olanipekun (SAN) and Oluwarotimi Akeredolu (SAN). To the Midwestern Forum, asking them to wait for eight years was unjust and inequitable.
They left and promised to revert to Egbe Amofin after discussing with their people. However, they did not report to EgbeAmofin; rather, they went ahead and contested the election feilding Augustine Alegeh (SAN) and won.
Against this backdrop, a section of the Bar said zoning was not respected in the election and as such, had been set aside. But leaders of the NBA fora are of different view. They believe that no outsider contested the election. All the four Presidential candidates, according to them, were members of the Western Lawyers Forum and were eligible for the position.
The Secretary of Egbe Amofin, Mr. Ranti Ajeleti said: “First, I am speaking as an individual not as the Secretary of Egbe Amofin.Having said that, I would say the zoning arrangement was not strictly adhered to, but on a second and deeper thought and with equity being the fulcrum, I would say the Mid-West is part of Western Region. Rather than being complacent the Mid-West fought its way into uniting with the Egbe. Consequently since the winner did not come from outside the Western Region, we can say the zoning was respected.”
He continued: “But from my own personal perspective, the main object of arranging the zoning was not achieved. To the critics of the zoning arrangement that it is undemocratic, I disagree with them because thepresent collegiate system is not democratic at all. A much more democratic system would have been one lawyer one vote and not the collegiate system. I personally subscribe to the zoning system for two main reasons among others. To reduce the cost of electioneering, it is on record that the last Bar election in terms of cost to each of the presidential candidates, would compare favourably with Nigerian Presidential election spending.
“Candidates spent fortunes in their electioneering campaigns. Considering the risk of traversing Nigeria, the candidates visited over 100 branches, criss-crossing the whole Nigeria; going into villages, towns, and homes of opinion makers and supposedly Bar leaders. They attended weddings, burial ceremonies, social outings of supposedly influential members of the Bar in all nooks and crannies of Nigeria, even when they were uninvited. Some even went as far as contacting non-Lawyers, who they thought could help them contact renowned Lawyers to support their aspirations. The risk of accident on the Nigerian roads, which I had cause to describe as “slaughter slabs”. Why playing “Russian Roulette,”Ajeleti asked?
“About two months to the election,” Ajeleti said: “We made a last-minute effort to let the contestants from our zone see reasons.We held a meeting at Ikorodu in Lagos State. Our hosts, Chiefs Benson (SAN), Sofola (SAN), Bandele Aiku (SAN), Afro Fayokun, Oluwarotimi Akeredolu (SAN) and Wole Olanipekun (SAN) with some top members of the Bar were there. The candidates refused to see reasons. We left the venue about 8 p.m. and headed for Ibadan, taking the old Ikorodu-Ogijo- Shagamu Road to link Shagamu-Ibadan Expressway.
“We aimed at getting to Ibadan within an hour or thereabout, but soon after we left, we got into a gridlock and did not reach Ogijo – a distance of less than 20 kilometres from Ikorodu, until about midnight,” he explained.
Narrating their experience, Ajeleti said shortly after the gridlock a vehicle speeding furiously from the opposite direction almost collided with their vehicle. “It missed our car by an inch, but Chief Priscila Kuye’s vehicle was not so lucky. Her vehicle was directly behind us. The on-coming vehicle brushed the driver’s side, scraped the mirror and pushed the Mercedes Benz Saloon car off the road into a ditch, causing its front tyre to burst.”
He said the incident made them to get to Ibadan very late. “We did not get home until about 2.00 a.m. It occurred to me that this was what each contestant was faced in the course of the campaign. But was this worth it?Do we have to wait until the preventable happens? he asked.
He recalled that when the “Egbe” picked Akeredolu in 2008, he did not spend one per cent of what each of the last presidential candidate spent. Each candidate, he said, had to attend “Bar week” of every branch and drop a token for them.
“Should it be? Strictly speaking, the regional fora did not play any role in the last presidential election. My study showed that the five presidential candidates had good outings across the nation. For instance Akintola (SAN) captured the votes of Benue State; Osas Erhabor captured Ilesa and Ife while Adesina (SAN) did well in Owerri, Adekoya( SAN) did well in Kaduna and Alegeh (SAN) did well in Port Harcourt,” he said.
Comparing candidates’ performances, Ajeleti said Akintola and Erhabor did not do well in the elections. “I agree they could not have done better, I wouldn’t know when the duo started nurturing the ambition of becoming NBA President, but they started their campaign barely a year ago while the likes of Mrs. Adekoya and Adesina had openly expressed their interest over eight years ago,” he said.
On whether the zoning arrangement should be laid to rest, Ajeleti said: “ I may not be expressing an opinion I will be talking about the realities on the ground. Now that it is the turn of the Arewa, they will want zoning to remain and the Eastern Bar, which would be the next beneficiary after Arewa, would want it to stay. But the Egbe that burnt its fingers would want it discarded, particularly those who lost out this year might want to try their luck in two years time.”
On whether it is necessary to strengthen zoning, Ajeleti said: “ If we cannot strengthen zoning, then we should go back to universal adult suffrage, which would reduce the influence of money. It would be difficult to buy all voters. Right now, it is very easy to buy the chairman of a branch, who would choose delegates during election. Principally I adopt totally the analysis of my good friend, Prof. Odinkalu, on the last election, particularly his recommendations.”
The EBF Chairman, Mr. Ogbonna O. Igwenyi, said: “The arrangement was well respected in the last elections because all the five candidates that contested for NBA Presidency came from the defunct Western Region of Nigeria. None came from another region. That was in agreement with the unwritten design of the NBA, to give each region the opportunity to govern the body. It does not matter to the association from which section of the region the candidate comes from, provided the person comes from the zone that has the chance to provide candidates to be voted.
On whether the regional fora, such as Arewa, Eastern Bar Forum(EBF) and Egbe Omofin, played any role in the last election, Igwenyi said: “My answer is yes. This is because it was the turn of the West to present to us one of their own as the preferred candidate. EBF waited and refused to endorse any of the contestants for the office of President. We had candidates of our choice for most of the elective offices, but for the Presidency, we did not.”
According to him, the reason for not adopting any of them stemmed from the fact that EBF had no mandate to choose for them who to endorse for the office. “Besides, as they say, it would amount to taking a pain reliever for another person’s headache,” he said.
He continued: “When they failed to endorse any of them, we from EBF decided that we shall vote according to our conscience for the office of president. Don’t forget, we had our ears to the ground when it became an open contest for the Presidential hopefuls. All the candidates campaigned vigorously in all the branches of the EBF before the election, hence we were able to note their relative strengths and weaknesses.’’
Austine Alegeh, Igwenyi said, carried the day because he came from the West and had a section of that region, Mid West, behind him. “Even though we did not adopt Alegeh, we knew that he had an edge over his opponents. He is unassuming, intelligent, unpretentious and open to suggestions to move the Bar forward. Above all, his men knew how to talk to their colleagues in a delicate electoral process. I guess, Arewa and a good portion of the Egbe bought into the Alegeh project for the reasons I have stated. Some will tell you that Alegeh spent a lot on the campaigns, but I stand to correct that impression. All of them except O. J. Erhabor did,” he said.
The best candidate, Igweni said, won. “Zonal arrangement in electing NBA president cannot be compromised in any election. When Mrs Adekoya contested against the candidate of the EBF many years ago, the zone took it to heart. The misadventure played out in the last election as most leaders in the East considered that affront dangerous to be forgiven so soon, the rest is now history,” he said.
Igweni noted that in two years, the pendulum would swing to the North and any candidate not of Arewa extraction would fail. “Die hard opportunists can try their hands, but it will not change anything. Zoning has been canonised, any day it is brought to the floor of NEC for reaffirmation, you can only hear muffled descent, but the result will be landslide,” Igwenyi said.
Assessing the election, the Chairman, Arewa Lawyers Forum (ALF), M. A. Abubakar, said: “There is a need for one to understand the workings of the zoning arrangement before one ventures a response. Yes, zoning was respected in the sense that we all appreciated that it was the turn of the West to produce the President of the NBA this time around.”
According to him, difficulties were encountered by the West in their inability to present a single candidate to the other Fora to support, which had the effect of throwing the election open in the region.
Voters, he said, voted for candidates of their choice, who were all from the Western Region. “Regional fora really played very significant role as can be seen from the fact that the various meetings the fora held in the build up to the elections turned a Mecca of some sort for all serious candidates,’’ he said.
Abubakar said zoning still exists because it is in the interest of the NBA to continue with it. “Zoning must be strengthen by revisiting the report of the Committee of Inclusion headed by Alhaji Abdullahi Ibrahim (SAN), which was set up during Olisa Agbakoba’s tenure as President,” Abubakar added.
