By Bola BOLAWOLE
The sex-for-favour tango between the Senate President, Mr. Godswill Akpabio, and another senator, Mrs. Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, is the latest scandal in town. Nigeria is a country of one scandal, one moment. So, expect the wind to blow over this scandal quickly. The heat generated may soon get too much for the members of the ruling class to bear and they – all of them, both the victim and the villain, since they both share the same class interest – may conclude that it is in their class interest to sheathe the sword, reach some accommodation and find an excuse to sweep the scandal under Nigeria’s bourgeoning carpet of iniquity.
Another thing that can happen is that another scandal will break before we say “Jack Robinson” and the media will move on to the new scandal and Nigerians will tag along. We are sprinters here and not long-distance runners. We quickly lose steam and our follow-up is miserable. Yet, the wisdom of our people is that the hunter who neglects to trace the game he shoots in the forest often fails to cart it home.
When members of the ruling class fight, it makes no sense to take sides because none of the fights, most times, concern the poor. It is usually intra-class squabbles over privileges and the sharing or allocation of resources amongst themselves that have little or no bearing on the welfare and well-being of the suffering masses. When things are okay among them, when they are all busy “eating”, we hardly hear grumblings. You would think they all belong to the same political party, the same ethnicity, the same religion, and the same sex! It is only when disagreements arise over sharing formulas that allegations begin to fly all over the place!
In the spat between Akpabio and Natasha, both fighters have their past, which has further compounded issues. In “Cockcrow at dawn”, popular artiste, Bongos Ikwue, described how futile it is to look for a virgin in a maternity ward. Searching for a saint in Nigeria’s National Assembly is no less elusive. It is a place notorious for turning fire-eating radicals into despicable rascals.
To make sense out of the senseless in-fighting in the Senate, I will act upon four sources; the first being the statement made by the Senate Leader, Mr. Opeyemi Bamidele, on why the senate suspended Natasha for six months, in which he “clarified” that the senator was suspended for gross misconduct and not because of the sexual harassment allegation she made against Senate President, Godswill Akpabio.
Opeyemi stressed that Akpoti-Uduaghan was suspended solely for her persistent acts of misconduct, blatant disregard for the provisions of the Senate Standing Orders 2023 and gross indiscipline. He listed the “persistent acts of misconduct”, “blatant disregard for the provisions of the Senate Standing Orders 2023” and “gross misconduct” as refusal to sit in her assigned seat during plenary on 25th February, 2025; speaking without being recognised by the presiding officer; engaging in unruly and disruptive behavior, obstructing the orderly conduct of Senate proceedings; making abusive and disrespectful remarks against the leadership of the Senate; and defying and refusing to comply with the summons of the Senate Committee on Ethics and Privileges mandated to investigate cases of misconduct.
My second source is the intervention by a doyen of the media, Mr. Tony Iredia. Titled “Senate shouldn’t have suspended Natasha Uduaghan”, Iredia argued thus: “… The senate relied heavily on the Legislative Houses (Powers and Privileges) Act of 2018 which, among other things, regulates the conduct of members and other persons connected with the proceedings of the Legislative House. Of particular importance is Section 21(2) of the Act which provides that ‘where any member is guilty of contempt of a Legislative House, the House may, by resolution, reprimand such member or suspend him from the service of the House for such period as it may determine’…
“A body such as the senate which does not have the power to make a senator, cannot give itself the power to unmake any senator. There are only two authorities that our constitution empowers to remove a legislator from office. These are: an election tribunal and the people that elected the legislator to represent them in the legislature. If an authority has no legal powers to remove a person from office, such an authority cannot validly exercise the illegal power by making the removal a short-term matter. Removal by one day in the name of suspension is a removal, it is irrelevant that the length of time of the removal is long or short because, as the saying goes, no person, group or authority can give what it does not have.
“The senate or any group or organization is no doubt entitled to making its own rules for the smooth running of the body. It is, therefore, in order for the senate to make rules to penalize its members for any infraction, but such punishment must be within its powers. If the senate is satisfied that Senator Natasha Uduaghan breached any of its rules, it can remove her from a chairmanship position of a committee or any other privileges hitherto bestowed on her by the senate. It can, however, not extend the punishment beyond its own power. This point has been repeatedly made and one wonders why our Legislative Houses have continued with the illegality of purporting to have the power to suspend one of its own.
“If they really don’t know, the courts have since severally said so. First, Femi Okurounmu, (Ogun Central) was suspended in 1999. This was followed by Joseph Waku, a senator from Benue State who was suspended in 2000. Senator Arthur Nzeribe from Imo state was suspended in 2002. Senator Ali Ndume, a former Senate leader, was suspended in 2017. Next was Senator Ovie Omo-Agege from Delta state who was suspended in 2018… Senator Abdul Ningi from Bauchi state was suspended in 2024. Interestingly, the Judiciary quashed all the suspensions, declaring them as illegal and unconstitutional…
“The House of Representatives has also had its own string of illegal suspensions that have similarly been quashed by the Judiciary. One would have thought that the National Assembly should have by now realized that it has no powers to suspend its legislators. But that has not been so. Instead, there have been reports of how some State Houses of Assembly have also followed the same line as their federal colleagues… (One such) celebrated case involved Rifkatu Samson Dannas who was suspended in 2012 by the Bauchi State House of Assembly.
“The offence of Dannas, the then only female and Christian member of the House, was her objection to the proposed relocation of Tafawa Balewa Local Government headquarters from Tafawa Balewa to Bununu – a location heavily populated by Muslims… She went to court to challenge her suspension, which the court declared as illegal and unconstitutional… Aptly put, therefore, the state of the law in Nigeria today is that it is illegal for a legislative House to suspend any member…
“Again, the posture that the legislature cannot be stopped from doing its job appears misconstrued because legislative functions are, in the words of our constitution, subject to judicial review (according to) the relevant provisions of Section 4(8) of our constitution… For this reason, the courts have continued to insist that “access to court is a fundamental right in the Constitution, which cannot be taken away by force or intimidation from any organ… it is unimaginable, as one lawyer suggested the other day, that although Order 67(4) of its own rules limits the suspension of a member of the upper chamber to a maximum of 14 days, the senate went ahead to violate such rules by suspending Uduaghan not for 14 days but for 6 months!”
My third source said “the real reason” Natasha was suspended was her insistence to have the moribund Ajaokuta steel complex investigated. Ajaokuta and the refineries are projects that have gulped, and are still gulping, billions of dollars without any respite or solution in sight. Natasha is said to have a motion crying for investigations. When will the motion see the light of day?
My fourth and final source is a social media post which showed Akpabio as a senator committing the same offence that Natasha is being punished for, against Bukola Saraki as senate president, and he was not given the Natasha treatment! Social media, they say, never forgets! What goes around comes around! He who comes to equity must come with clean hands! And if you live in a glass house, don’t throw stones!
To conclude: Was it the importance of this dog-fight that made the Senate Leader, and not the senate spokesperson, to address the media on the matter while the Senate President himself acted as the accuser and judge in his own case? Why was the latter’s incongruity lost on a senate brimming with lawyers?
I believe, with the above, you are able to form your own reasonable opinion on the Akpabio-Natasha face-off!