Dr. Anne Uruegi Agi has issued a detailed response to the NBA’s statement on the SPIDEL 2025 elections, directly challenging both the factual assertions and the motives behind the Association’s narrative. Her response comes against the backdrop of controversy over the authorship of the NBA statement, which was first released under the name of the NBA Publicity Secretary, later disowned by her, and subsequently reissued as a statement of the First Vice President.
Dr. Agi argues that this shifting authorship reflects a deeper problem of narrative control and evasion, rather than transparent leadership.
Her publication seeks to place her version of events on record and to address what she describes as continued distortion of facts by the NBA leadership.
The said publication is below:
MY RESPONSE TO THE DISTORTION OF FACTS AS CONTAINED IN THE NBA STATEMENT ON SPIDEL 2025 ELECTIONS OF 13 DECEMBER, 2025
When the SPIDEL issues played out, I resolved not to give unnecessary publicity to it but felt I owed a duty to members of SPIDEL to explain the facts. So I made a publication only on the SPIDEL WhatsApl Platform, and rested. I never posted same on my social media pages because I did not want to unnecessary inflame the polity or expose the NBA's dirty linen in public as it pertains to SPIDEL. However, my attention has been drawn to publications on the SPIDEL issue on the NBA Presidents Facebook page concerning my person, so I have no choice but to meet him here.
I have read the statement issued under the name of the NBA Publicity Secretary, Bridget Ijeoma Edokwe regarding the events of SPIDEL in Uyo. For the avoidance of doubt, it is now public knowledge that the said statement did not originate from the named officer, who has expressly disclaimed authorship. That same statement has now been rebaptized as being made by the 1st Vice President. Laughable!
It is also rather amusing that this administration considers me and my supposed “issue” of such great importance that time was taken to concoct falsehoods about my person, dress them up on official NBA letterhead, and circulate them as an institutional response. I genuinely did not realise I was that significant.
I did not mince words when I called out the NBA President, Mazi Afam Osigwe and all who had a hand in the infamous conduct in Uyo. It is, therefore, disingenuous for the NBA President to hide behind proxy authorship while engaging directly with my person and narrative.
Let us address substance.
The Mazi Afam administration claims in this publication, that the SPIDEL Electoral Committee acted in contravention of the Constitution and the Uniform Bye Laws. Yet, in the same breath, the NBA President approved outcomes that are themselves patently ultra vires the same Constitution he now seeks to invoke selectively.
- A Chairman for SPIDEL, Dr. Uju Agomoh, who did not pay Bar Practicing Fees as and when due, if at all, and who was disqualified on that ground has been sworn in as the Chairman of SPIDEL. We were asked by the electoral cttee, to supply evidence of payment of BPF for 2 years, she supplied only for one, paid in August, 2024, way out of time. Lawyers are all aware that payment of BPF should be on or before March 31st of each year, to be of any use. From the electoral cttee report, the said receipt tendered did not even have her name on it. Her 2nd nominator also fell foul of the guidelines. These were grounds upon which the electoral ctte disqualified her. Even the NBA has disqualified candidates on these grounds in the past! Yet here we are today, in a situation where the current administration has faulted the electoral cttee and gone on ahead to congratulate Dr. Agomoh on her emergence as the Chairman of SPIDEL. The President and his team are conveniently looking the other way.
- A gentleman, Enome Amatey, my own branch Chairman, was approved for the office of Secretary, who neither picked a nomination form for that office nor is a member of SPIDEL and who did not pay any dues for the section, yet handpicked to be secretary of the Section. Same with the position of Treasurer, Barbara Tosan vied for. The current Treasurer did not pick a form for that office! Yet she has been foisted on the house and the NBA leadership sees nothing wrong.
These are not technical breaches. These are constitutional breaches which go to the root of eligibility. The NBA Constitution/Uniform bye Laws states clearly how section officers are to be elected, and this was not adhered to in the current case where persons were handpicked, yet the NBA President approved of this. If constitutional compliance is the standard, it must be applied consistently, not weaponised against disfavoured individuals and ignored for preferred candidates. One cannot pick and choose which provisions of the Constitution to obey.
The publication admits that a meeting of a few persons he termed “stakeholders” was convened. Based on observations raised at that meeting, a live electoral process was unilaterally truncated and replaced with a harmonised list. This is precisely the problem. If those observations were genuine and made in good faith, why were they not tabled before the Annual General Meeting of SPIDEL, the highest decision-making body of the Section? Why was the AGM not asked to resolve, transparently and openly, whether to dissolve the process and constitute a new caretaker committee through an agreed democratic mechanism?
If a handful of persons could take that decision behind closed doors, why was the AGM denied that same power?
That omission exposes the hollowness of the justification now being advanced.
Even more troubling is the attempt to rewrite motive.
The NBA President's publication states that it is “laughable” for me to say he rejected my candidature. Yet he has not denied the core facts. He has not denied that he railed at me in 2022 when I called him for my book launch that he heard I would not vote for him. He has not denied that in August 2025, he told a learned senior counsel that I would never be Chief Rapporteur because I did not vote for him. He, through his 1st Vice, merely spins around collateral issues and internet links, which are of no moment. I stated clearly in my 1st publication that the president's statement was made years before he even ran for office. So when the rebuttal restates that fact as though it were a bright idea, I wonder if everything is all right at the Secretariat!
Futhermore, it is disingenuous to suggest that political positions could not have been known in 2022. In the Nigerian Bar, consultations for leadership positions routinely begin two to three years before elections. Anyone not inclined to double standards knows this. Candidates and their positions are known long before the election cycle, just as the positions of their supporters are. Everyone in the NBA knows that the NBA President had intentions to run for the ptesidency years before he ran. The President and his team need to work hard on releasing a more plausible statement. Hehehhe.😁
If the President is certain of his truth and does not fear God, let him deny those conversations plainly and without evasion. Let him sign the next NBA publication himself saying these conversations never happened!
Furthermore, if Mr. John Aikpokpo Martins was said to be ineligible to contest or be appointed, on what rational basis was I, Anne Agi, who was duly nominated, screened, cleared, and running unopposed for the office of Secretary, equally excluded? I am yet to get an official reason.
The statement purportedly from the 1st Vice President of the NBA attempts to deflect from the real issue by asserting that the Chief Rapporteur of the 2025 NBA Conference did not support the NBA President, and yet was appointed. That assertion proves nothing and resolves nothing. The question is not whether one person somewhere was appointed despite not voting for him. The question is whether personal grievance was deployed selectively to block my participation in multiple capacities, including SPIDEL, after he expressly stated to me and to a learned senior counsel that my refusal to vote for him was the problem. Is he denying that conversation never happened?
The President cannot erase specific conversations by pointing to a different appointment involving a different person. Individual facts do not dissolve by generalised examples. My account stands because it is precise, consistent, and capable of direct denial if untrue. Notably, no such direct denial has been made. Let the President come out and say he never raged at me, accusing me of not supporting him when I called him for my book launch. Let him come out and say he never told a learned senior counsel in August 2025 that his refusal was because I did not vote for him.
It is obvious to all that the reason now being advanced for rejecting my candidature is materially different from the reasons earlier given this year for rejecting me as the Chief Rapporteur of the 2025 NBA Conference. That earlier rejection was conveyed in clear terms, and there is a named learned counsel who is a direct witness to that conversation. Shifting explanation does not cure impropriety, it only reveals falsehood.
It is also deeply troubling that the NBA letterhead is now being used as a vehicle for half truths, distortions, and statements whose authorship is deliberately obscured. A statement was first issued in the name of the NBA Publicity Secretary, who has since categorically denied authoring it. It then re-emerged clothed as an institutional position by the 1st Vice President, (who wasn't privy to the midnight meeting or any of the scenarios presented), while in substance, it bears the unmistakable fingerprints of the NBA President himself.
This pretence of distance is unconvincing. A statement allegedly issued by another officer, yet immediately posted and amplified by the NBA President on his personal Facebook wall, (see link: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17VXh67NNB/), speaks louder than any disclaimer. One cannot simultaneously claim detachment and exercise ownership. The President has claimed ownership of that statement by putting it on his wall. He should not hesitate, he should own it with his full chest. He should also note that institutional communication should not be used as a shield for personal battles or as an escape route for plausible deniability if matters go wrong.
This pattern: proxy authorship, selective constitutionalism, private meetings supplanting general meetings, and public gaslighting of concerned members confirms what many already perceive. What occurred in Uyo was not an honest effort to avert crisis. It was an assertion of raw power, followed by an attempt to launder that power through procedure after the fact.
On the repeated attempt to justify what happened under the banner of “consensus”, the record must also be set straight. Yes, SPIDEL has adopted consensus candidates in the past. But consensus in SPIDEL has always meant agreement by ALL parties concerned, openly reached, and transparently communicated. It has never meant secret midnight meetings, unilateral decisions, or the presentation of fait accompli lists to an AGM.
For the avoidance of doubt, I have personally participated in a true consensus process. In 2023, when elections were held that brought in the John Aikpokpo Martins led administration, I indicated interest in running for Secretary of SPIDEL. I was approached and asked to step aside for Ms Funmi Adeogun, with the assurance that I would run at a later time. I gladly did so, not under duress, but because Funmi is a diligent and capable colleague whom I respect, and I was satisfied that the Secretariat would be in good hands. That is what consensus looks like.
It is, therefore, astonishing to now read in the 1st Vice President’s letter, written on behalf of the President, an allegation that the Electoral Committee had drawn up “hand picked nominees” to be returned unopposed. This is plainly untrue. The floor was open to all who wished to contest. I consulted widely and openly declared my intention. I spoke to several colleagues, some of whom also intended to run for that office and various other offices. No one handpicked me. I filled a form, met the requirements, and submitted within the timeline. That is all. If others failed to submit their forms within the stipulated time, or did not submit at all, that cannot be rebranded as handpicking on my part. Compliance with published guidelines does not translate into conspiracy simply because the outcome was inconvenient to certain interests.
Furthermore, the narrative now being advanced that the Caretaker or Interim Committee was itself the Electoral Committee, and therefore lacked the power to constitute an Electoral Committee, is both disingenuous and legally unsustainable. It is a false construct invented after the fact. The same publication repeatedly uses the word “purported” in reference to the Kunle Edun SAN led Electoral Committee, yet that Committee was constituted openly, announced publicly, and proceeded to issue detailed election guidelines that were circulated to members without objection.
Those guidelines were not clandestine. They were public, explicit, and acted upon by candidates who relied on them in good faith. If the NBA President and his team believed that the Caretaker Committee lacked the authority to constitute an Electoral Committee, that objection ought to have been raised immediately upon the Committee’s inauguration or, at the very latest, upon the publication of the guidelines. They did neither.
It is only after the Electoral Committee screened candidates and cleared individuals who were evidently not favoured that this sudden constitutional awakening occurred. One cannot approbate and reprobate. Having watched the process unfold, allowed members to submit forms, screened candidates, and waited until outcomes became inconvenient, the NBA leadership is now estopped from claiming that the entire process was a nullity ab initio.
If it was indeed intended that the Caretaker Committee itself should conduct the elections, silence in the face of the constitution of a separate Electoral Committee amounts to acquiescence. Rights slept upon cannot later be resurrected to wreak havoc. The law does not permit parties to lie in wait, allow a process to run its course, and then wake up to truncate it when the results do not align with predetermined preferences. This belated objection is not about constitutional fidelity. It is about control, exercised too late and defended too loudly.
This attempt to retrospectively criminalise due process only reinforces the conclusion that what occurred in Uyo was not about constitutional compliance or crisis prevention, but about control, preference, and power.
What we are witnessing is not leadership. It is selective outrage, retrospective justification, and the dangerous notion that good intentions can excuse unconstitutional acts. They cannot. In law and in principle, intention does not sanitise illegality. It is sad that this needs to be said at all. It is even sadder, and ironic, that it must be said in relation to the NBA, its current national leadership and to a Section whose very identity is anchored on and devoted to public interest, constitutionalism, and the rule of law. When those values are sacrificed on the altar of convenience, no amount of rhetoric about unity can restore credibility.
It is tragic that a section is being asked to accept that democracy can be suspended by fiat, elections aborted by private consensus, and illegality excused by narrative control. And all of this was admitted on an official letterhead! Unbelievable!
Again, I repeat that this publication purportedly from the 1st Vice President, only reinforces that what happened in Uyo was not a harmonisation. It was an imposition. It was not crisis management. It was crisis creation; and the attempt to paint those who object as enemies of SPIDEL only deepens the stain on our beloved banner! (Banner without stain indeed!)😏🙄
I am not desperate for office. I am not owed a title. But I owe myself, and the profession I have served, the duty to speak truthfully when process is subverted and integrity is treated as expendable.
I have no interest in prolonging this. What is done is done! The whole thing now bores me. Let those who are so power drunk and desperate to play God continue. Everyone will bear the repercussions of their actions either on earth, or when we stand before God.
However, having said that, I will not accept false equivalence, narrative manipulation, or the abuse of institutional platforms to mask personal animus.
Silence in the face of this would amount to complicity. History will be kinder to those who stood up than to those who explained away the indefensible.
The record is now complete.
I would like to be left alone!
I am still my father’s daughter.
Dr. Anne Uruegi Agi
In further discussions with our correspondent,, Dr. Agi has rejected attempts by the NBA to rebrand the events in Uyo as consensus building or crisis management, insisting instead that what occurred was an imposition unsupported by law, which represents a troubling precedent of power overriding procedure. She maintains that her intervention is not about office or entitlement, but about preserving constitutionalism, due process and professional integrity within the NBA and SPIDEL.
With her account now firmly on record, she shared her intention to disengage from further exchanges, leaving the issues raised to professional scrutiny, the judgment of history and conscience.
