The fight between Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan and Senator Godswill Akpabio looks like a case of ‘see finish’, to state it in local parlance. Her familial relationship with the President of the Senate (only they and, perhaps, their respective families know the true nature of this relationship) appears to have undermined the respect she has for him as a public officer.
One clear proof of this is that the very incident that led to her allegation of sexual harassment occurred in the country home of Senator Akpabio and in the presence of Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan’s husband. Both senators walked hand-in-hand, trailed by Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan’s husband, as Senator Akpabio showed them round his house. It was in this very improbable situation that Senator Akpabio propositioned Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan, asked her, in her words, to ‘make him happy’.
This was in December 2023 just about a month after Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan was elected into the Senate. Nobody heard a word of this incident, not even her husband who was within earshot and who asked to know what the gentleman senator said was told anything. Nothing until her outburst following the change of her seating position.
Her unruly behaviour thereafter, defying the intervention of her colleagues and shouting at Senator Akpabio where he calmly sat as the presiding officer of the Senate, was in the least unflattering. It made her look unhinged. She compounded her error and made a mess of her sexual harassment and punitive discrimination allegations by rushing first to media organisations, some of which cannot conceal their bias, to report. It was like two law-enforcement officers exchanging blows in public turning to bemused bystanders watching them to know who between them was in the wrong.
Who should ordinary members of the public turn to when fighting if legislators cannot rely on the laws or regulations they make to resolve disagreements among themselves? What was the point of Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan rushing to the media to lodge complaints about the President of the Senate? Was she prevented at the Senate? Natasha is a senator of the Nigerian state not a defenceless school girl that could be shoved aside without anyone hearing of it.
This is the point, perhaps, that the likes of Senator Florence Ita-Giwa and other past and present female senators who have spoken on the issue tried to make against the ire of preconditioned feminists for whom every male transgression is a sign of misogyny. Her position in the Senate offers her more than enough room to seek redress and in fact national attention, in case anyone tries to stifle her complaints. She has not shown that the floor of the Senate was inadequate to air her allegations except she was angling to scandalise the Senate through emotional blackmail, which she has been demonstrating with the tears she sheds at the slightest opportunity.
Her apparently manufactured pain and dramatisation of her grievance has the potential of diminishing the anguish or occluding the pain of actual victims of sexual harassment. Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan may have been sexually harassed as she has alleged but she is yet to present an actual case of sexual harassment. Nothing beyond her words despite her promise of concrete evidence. It took her all of three days after her allegation gained national attention in the media before she would table it on the floor of the Senate. Her goal, it seemed, was to blackmail the Senate and its leadership.
What is her appeal to the media rabble about? An invitation to a lynch mob? Even while being interviewed by the obviously sympathetic and often-opinionated Arise News crew and things appeared not to be going her way, Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan threatened to take her complaints to Facebook! What is it about her tireless fascination with the media and this hankering for attention? She seems to have misunderstood her role as chair of the Local Content Committee, extending its meaning to its everyday social media understanding. She has literally been creating content for Nigerians and the world.
What prompted the PDA with her husband, where they had a kiss at the entrance of the National Assembly? When did that start- before or after her allegations? How much of her allegations are, indeed, real and how much are for the cameras? There are so many things wrong about the way Natasha has gone about her fight with Senator Akpabio and her colleagues at the Senate, including the female ones and others who preceded them to the Senate.
They have to the last person refused to speak in her favour. There is so much the Senator needs to correct about her approach for her allegations to begin to sound plausible and thereby save herself the tag of a femme fatale. Her latest attempt at feminist activism and as latter-day Rosa Parks will not answer for these shortcomings. As a first-time senator who has headed a couple of important committees, she has clearly enjoyed the patronage of Senator Akpabio. This could not have been entirely earned. It is on record that her husband had lobbied him on her behalf.
Senator Akpabio has a previous allegation of sexual misconduct trailing him and has not adequately acquitted himself of that. Neither has Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan who also has a similar history of making reckless allegations of sexual harassment, the most notorious being the one against Reno Omokri. It took Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan all of 14 months after the incident to lodge her complaints against Senator Akpabio. It took her six years, between 2014 and 2021, to accuse Reno Omokri of the same thing. What is the long wait for? In three weeks since her allegations, she has presented nothing close to the concrete evidence she promised. She must not expect, as she said before the Inter-Parliamentary Union, that the Senate President would stand down based on mere words and before a prima facie case of sexual harassment has been established.
She has every right to lodge her allegation which should be treated with all the seriousness it deserves. But she must provide evidence. If she, however, has no evidence, she should admit it. It does not mean she lied but it does undermine her claim. Henceforth, she should learn to keep evidence, since she appears prone to making allegations of sexual harassment or being sexually harassed. Either way, we are perhaps at that point where the respective careers of these two senators either in being flippant and making inept remarks or self-aggrandising and engaging in manipulative conduct is about being terminated. The Senate has done its bit but only the courts are now best placed to deliver justice. Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan should cut to the chase and do what she must.
