“We are all Natasha”: A Shameless Senate on the Global Stage

The top echelons of the Nigerian senate have repeatedly claimed that the allegations of sexual harassment levelled by Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan against Senate President Godswill Akpabio has nothing to do with her suspension from the Senate for half a year. According to the cock and bull story they want us all to believe, it is simply because she ostensibly flouted internal rules guiding the Senate procedures. 

This position which had been peddled within the national sphere was echoed by the Senate Leader, Senator Bamidele Opeyemi speaking last week, faraway in New York through the mouth of Hon Kafila Ogbora, the chairman(!) of the house committee on women affairs and social development. 

This was at a session of the International Parliamentary Union, which was organised as one of the activities of the 69th session of United Nations Conference on the Status of Women (CSW) that takes place there every year around the International Women’s Day. 

Senator Akpoit-Uduaghan appeared at the IPU a day earlier and issued a cry for help against repression for speaking out in the wake of alleged sexual harassment she had repeatedly faced from the senate president.

She pointed out that she had been suspended from the senate on 5 March, instead of the senate president recusing himself while a thorough investigation of her allegation would take place. She then utilised the opportunity to highlight the bigger picture of “the crisis of women in political representation” with just 2.8% of women in the senate for example.  

Ogbara, in reading Bamidele Opeyemi’s speech, wants the world to believe that Akpoti-Uduaghan’s suspension was simply because of “gross misconduct and rude behaviour” and the action taken to remove her from the senate chamber for half a year was a decision taken by the chamber on the recommendation of its committee on ethics and privileges to “uphold the integrity of the senate”. 

This would have been laughable were it not tragic. And it is particularly so considering the radical antecedence of the senate leader, Bamidele Opeyemi as a student and pro-democracy activist on one hand, and the rambunctious shamelessness of the senate president, Godswill Akpabio on the other.

Opeyemi served as president of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) between January and December 1990.

During this period, as Pat Utomi points out, he was expelled by the University of Benin authorities. Femi Falana took up the case and won, ensuring that the expulsion was rescinded. The thrust of the litigation was the absence of fair hearing. Yet, the same Opeyemi is hiding behind a finger regarding Akpoti’s case, and acting like the proverbial man who hides a piece of meat in his mouth and asks the world to look for it. 

Akpabio on his party, as also underscored by Utom, was much more bellicose on the floor of the senate as a  member, when Bukola Saraki was the senate president. A good example of this was 17 October 2018 when he disregarded Saraki on the use of a microphone and subsequently called for the resignation of Saraki as senate president. A video of that session has resurfaced and gone viral over the last few days. 

The lack of a moral or political basis for those in the leadership of the senate to take the reactionary stance they have taken on this matter does not only have to do with their distant past. They have repeatedly shown themselves to be shameless liars and manipulators, even till date. Is it the “off the mic” drama of the senate president when he was minister of Niger Delta Affairs we want to talk about. 

We are all living witnesses to the nature of the senate president’s “prayers” to senators. In August 2023, the senate president had publicly informed senators that some monies had been sent to their “various accounts “to enjoy” their holidays, forgetting that their proceedings were being live streamed. On realising his faux pas when senators shouted, he turned it around saying it was “prayers” that were to be sent and the accounts in question were email accounts! 

Is it someone like that sane Nigerians will take his word over that of a women who has accused him of sexual harassment, especially as this is not the first time that such would be taking place? We can recall the case of Dr Joi Nuneh, a former Acting Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) who said she slapped him when he tried to grab her behind, sometime in 2020. 

Belatedly, Akpabio now threatens to sue Dr Nuneh, in the wake of the allegations raised by Akpoti-Uduaghan, five years later!. But what was the action he took in 2020? He tried to have her arrested on contrived grounds. 

Generally, sexual predators try to deflect from the allegations raised when it is difficult to provide verifiable evidence as is often the case because harassment tends to be done most times in the shadows. And with those who wield such great powers as Akpabio has done in several ways over the last half a century, they bring the weight of the state to bear against those who dare face them.

Akpabio is the primary villain in this case. But it is not only him. As an institution, the Nigerian senate stands on the dock of history. And with its actions thus far, it will stand condemned today and for all of posterity, despite its various shenanigans on this matter. 

One of the most symbolic representations of the character of the Nigerian senate, and the bankruptcy of its stance on Natasha's allegations, is Neda Bernards Imasuen, the chair of its ethics and privileges committee which recommended Akpoti-Uduaghan’s suspension, obviously on the instruction of the senate president.

Mr Imasuen, who is a Labour Party senator was disbarred as a lawyer by the New York State Supreme Court fifteen years ago for a serial “pattern and practice” of  “professional misconduct”, which included swindling a client of millions of dollars in professional fees. This is the person that chairs the supposedly “distinguished” senate’s ethics committee. What honour can be expected from such a body, when its head is irredeemably rotten? 

By the way, this goes to show there is no difference between LP, APC and PDP. And this is not just about this ethically bankrupt chair of the senate’s ethics committee. Even Ireti Kingibe, the LP senator for the FCT who is also a woman, was dismissive of the case. 

She initially swung between silence and support for the suspension of Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan. She only recently broke ranks with the other senators to call for an open probe of the sexual harassment allegations following “her relentless dragging on social media”. And, this was subsequent to Natasha’s taking the matter to the international sphere.

Akpabio and the choristers of so-called senators he leads might not yet fully appreciate where they are heading to in their patriarchal bus on the road of infamy, because they lack shame. Last, last, e don cast; there is nowhere for them to hide, even with their lies. And it is not just about today. They are writing themselves into the history which will make their children’s children shudder with shame for them, when they read it.