For many lawyers, it has become one of those things we simply accept. Every NBA election cycle, our phones begin to ring with calls from candidates we have never spoken to. WhatsApp messages arrive from campaign teams. Bulk SMS messages accumulate over weeks. Emails land in our inboxes promoting manifestos and platforms. Most lawyers treat it as background noise; an inconvenience that comes with membership. But underneath the routine of it lies a question that the profession has been too comfortable not asking: how exactly are these candidates obtaining our personal contact details?
One of the most dangerous characteristics of a flawed system is that its flaws eventually begin to feel normal. Practices that would immediately raise concern in any other context become accepted simply because they have been repeated often enough, until the point where people stop asking questions; not because the questions no longer matter, but because familiarity has made them feel unnecessary. That appears to be what has happened here, and it is worth pausing to examine it.
The Question Nobody Is Asking
The Electoral Committee of the Nigerian Bar Association expressly permits candidates to engage members through personal visits, phone calls, and private messages as part of their campaigns, and there is nothing inherently objectionable about that in principle. Elections are conversations, and candidates should be able to present their vision for the profession to the people who will vote. The more important question, however, is the one sitting behind the permission: how are candidates obtaining the telephone numbers and email addresses of thousands of members in the first place?
Every lawyer provides personal information to the Nigerian Bar Association for legitimate administrative purposes; names, contact details, branch information, and other data submitted at the point of registration and through the annual practising fee process. Members provide that information understanding it will be used to administer their membership, facilitate official professional communication, verify electoral eligibility, and carry out the Association's legitimate functions. Whether that same data should be available for election campaigning is a different question entirely, and it is one that requires a clear answer: under what legal authority does such use occur, were members ever informed that their contact information could be used this way, and was any form of consent sought or obtained? If candidates are accessing this information without any involvement from the NBA or its Electoral Committee, the question of how they are reaching members at this scale through private channels becomes even more pressing.
What the Law Requires
The Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 is founded on principles that are directly relevant to this situation, including lawfulness, fairness, transparency, and purpose limitation. Personal data collected for specified and legitimate purposes should not be repurposed in ways that are incompatible with those original purposes without an appropriate legal basis, and the people whose data is being used have a right to know how it is being processed. These principles apply equally to professional bodies and legal institutions, the NDPA makes no exception for associations simply because their activities are professional rather than commercial in character.
To be clear, this commentary does not allege that the Nigerian Bar Association has unlawfully disclosed members' personal information. We simply do not know, and that is precisely the point. There is no publicly available explanation of how candidates obtain members' contact details during election periods, whether any official access is granted and on what terms, what safeguards exist to prevent misuse, or what rights members have in relation to the processing of their information. The NBA has indicated that while names and branches appear on the published voters' register, telephone numbers and email addresses are not publicly displayed, which is a welcome clarification but one that deepens rather than resolves the question of how candidates are nonetheless able to communicate directly with members through private channels on such a wide scale.
The Profession Must Hold Itself to Its Own Standards
There is a dimension to this issue that goes beyond data protection compliance, and it deserves to be named directly. Nigerian lawyers advise businesses every day on compliance with the Nigeria Data Protection Act. They encourage organisations to be transparent about how personal information is collected, used, and shared. They advise clients to implement privacy notices, obtain consent where it is required, put appropriate safeguards in place, and respect the rights of the people whose data they hold. It would be difficult to defend a position in which the legal profession holds its clients to standards that its own leading institution does not meet. The rule of law begins at home, and that principle applies to data protection as much as it applies to anything else.
This is not a uniquely Nigerian challenge. Around the world, professional bodies, universities, regulators, and membership organisations have had to rethink how election campaigns operate in light of modern data protection standards. In many jurisdictions, candidates communicate through official association portals, published candidate statements, or mailing systems administered by the organisation itself, rather than through direct access to members' personal contact information. The balance struck in those environments, between enabling democratic engagement and protecting members' privacy is one the Nigerian Bar Association should be actively working toward.
What Is Being Asked
This commentary is not an attack on the Association, and it is not a criticism of candidates who are simply participating in an electoral process under the rules as they currently exist. It is a straightforward call for institutional transparency on a question that members are entitled to have answered. If candidates receive official access to members' contact information, the NBA should explain the legal basis for that access, the safeguards governing it, and the limits placed on its use. If they do not receive such access, the Association should clarify how such widespread direct campaigning is occurring and what it intends to do about it. A clear public statement from the NBA or its Electoral Committee would resolve the uncertainty and demonstrate that the Association takes its data governance obligations as seriously as it expects others to take theirs.
Professional standards are rarely lost in a single moment. They erode gradually, as practices that should attract scrutiny become routine, and routine becomes tradition, and tradition becomes something nobody questions anymore. The legal profession has both the standing and the responsibility to resist that pattern; including, and perhaps especially, when the institution involved is its own.
