Tag: Emmanuel Aziken

  • Akpabio’s Fear Of the Unknown, by Emmanuel Aziken

    Akpabio’s Fear Of the Unknown, by Emmanuel Aziken

    Nigeria joins the world in celebrating International Women’s Day with gender activists mourning the decimation of their numeral strength in governance.

    The 1999 Senate had three women: Senators Florence Ita-Giwa, Stella Omu, and Khairat Gwadabe. However, 25 years later, it is a mark of the nation’s disrespect for gender equality that the IWD would be marked with only three women as senators in a chamber of 108 senators. Senator Natasah Akpoti-Uduaghan, who could have been the fourth female senator, was on Thursday suspended from the chamber in what many have described as the most repressive exertion of testosterone in the chamber since 1999.

    According to the Senate resolution, she should not present herself as a senator of the Federal Republic anywhere.

    With women constituting just 3.6% of the 10th Senate and another 17 women in the 360 House of Representatives, representing 4.7%, there is no doubt that Nigeria falls short of gender balance in parliament.

    As of 2024, the average representation of women in African parliaments was 26% with the majority of the countries having failed to attain the 40% benchmark for gender balance.

    Only five countries, Rwanda with 61% of parliamentarians being women, South Africa with 46.7%, Namibia with 44.2%, Mozambique with 42.4% and Ethiopia 41.5% met the mark.

    It is remarkable that Nigeria was at one time improving in its gender representation index with about 10 females in the Senate while the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP was in power.

    However, since 2015 that figure has progressively decreased to the level it is today in damning rebuke of Nigeria’s assertions on the Beijing Conference of affirmative action as chorused exactly 30 years ago.

    Rwanda, South Africa, and Namibia, which topped the list in gender balance, also came in the top half of the Mo Ibrahim Governance Index, proving to some degree that women representatives in government help to promote good governance.

    There is no doubt that the disappearance of women in parliament is correlated to the increasing bastardisation of the electoral process in the country. More women, like many faint-hearted men, have despaired over the intrigues and violence that lead to the election of our lawmakers.

    Only the women who can fight like men are able to scale through the emotional and physical skirmishes that is called election in Nigeria. That perhaps explains the controversial claims of Senator Florence Ita-Giwa when she poohpoohed the claims of sexual harassment that Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan raised against Senate President Godswill Akpabio.

    According to Ita-Giwa, any woman who can survive the intrigues to win an election into the Senate cannot talk about sexual harassment! That is still a controversial claim, though.

    So as Nigeria marks the International Women’s Day today, there is bound to be a particular focus on the Senate and deeper interrogation of the issues that led to the six months suspension of Mrs Akpoti-Uduaghan from the Senate.

    The allegation of sexual harassment brought by her against Akpabio was the first time such an issue would be brought against a presiding officer since the advent of the Fourth Republic. It is, however, not true that the Senate has been very clean of sexcapades. Lurid tales of illicit affairs occur, especially when Senators go on retreats with some ad-hoc committees reportedly being mandated to arrange young ladies for the comfort of male senators.

    In one such retreat many years ago, a presiding officer was reportedly slapped by his wife who saw him entangled with a lady while the male senators were ‘communiquing.’

    The jury is still out there as to the transparency and probity embarked by the 10th Senate in dealing with the allegation brought against Akpabio by Akpoti-Uduaghan.

    This case, along with other pernicious legislative conduct of the 10th Senate has further diminished the institution. The crass disobedience to a court order and the rush to indict and punish the female lawmaker do not portray the Senate in a good light.

    While many believe that Akpabio may indeed be innocent of the allegation made by Akpoti-Uduaghan, the rush by the Senate to punish her was largely indecorous. Akpabio could well have appeared before the Senate investigative committee and dared Akpoti-Uduaghan to produce her evidence.

    The fear is that Akpabio did not want to go that route simply because he may have been afraid of the eruption of other unpalatable issues between him and Akpoti-Uduaghan, which are essentially not relating to sex.

    As Nigerians have been made to recall, the suspended senator’s husband, Chief Emmanuel Uduaghan had been a long-standing family friend of the Akpabios. Their relationship predated the marital engagement between Uduaghan and Natasha. Akpabio confessed to attending and sleeping over during the marriage in Kogi State.

    Indeed, Akpabio’s communication strategist, Mr Ken Okulugbo, while defending his principal on Channels Television on Thursday night confessed that he was recommended for his job by Chief Uduaghan.

    So, being top players in the Nigerian political space, there is no doubt that the Akpabios and Uduaghans would have shared secrets and collaborated in their respective journeys to dominance in their political and business spaces. Along the way, they would have known one another’s unpalatable issues.

    So, one conspiracy theory emerging is that the Senate President brought the weight of his powers on Natasha not because he was guilty of sexual harassment of a family friend but because of the fear of the unknown!

  • PDP’s ‘Delinquent’ children mock, by Emmanuel Aziken

    PDP’s ‘Delinquent’ children mock, by Emmanuel Aziken

    Pity the lot of Nigeria’s once formidable Peoples Democratic Party as it today wriggles in death throes. Given its well-known reputation as a bad mother, it is no surprise that some of the children of the PDP who rose to prominence on the platform have been quick to disown the party. Even worse, to poke fun at their mother.

    Last Tuesday as the Senate resumed plenary, a former PDP Senate leader, two-term governor on the banner of the party, and before then, multi-commissioner on the platform of the PDP, that is, Senator Godswill Akpabio, now sitting comfortably as All Progressives Congress, APC Senate President took the joke to another level.

    Responding to the prayer by Senator Ned Nwoko to set up a Senate ad-hoc Committee to investigate the crisis in the PDP following his defection, Akpabio with a smirk said:

    “This defection is an earthquake, one that will lead to many other PDP senators dumping the party.”

    The prayer by Nwoko for a Senate investigation into the crisis in the PDP, undoubtedly, epitomises the low level the party has gone to. Even those who speak for the party today at almost every level are doing so not out of conviction but for selfish reasons.

    The intervention by the Board of Trustees, BoT into the latest crisis in the party in the face of contention over the position of National Secretary has now been enveloped with controversy.

    The BoT ordinarily should be the conscience of the party, able to through moral suasion and institutional memory of its members, help to nudge the party towards good manners.

    However, that intervention has now been riddled with controversy. The first controversy is the moral fettles of the chairman of the BoT, that is Senator Adolphus Wabara. When it suited him very well not too long ago, Wabara easily played anti-party by ruling out his party’s prospects in 2027 in Abia State when he affirmed the Labour Party governor, Mr Alex Otti for a second term.

    Beyond that is the way the BoT has gone about the duty of arbitrating between the contenders for the position of National Secretary. While the BoT may be commended for its decision to seek expert advice from one of the leading legal experts in the party, Dr Taminu Turaki SAN, the BoT’s seeming refusal to vigorously interrogate the issues at stake is befuddling.

    The main contention presently in the PDP is that Senator Samuel Anyanwu who was elected to the position in 2021 did not resign the position to contest the party’s governorship ticket in Imo State.

    This correspondent like many others within and outside the party may have been troubled by the morality of the act. However, the constitution of the PDP allows such actions. Section 47 (5) of the party’s constitution gives the leeway for party executives to stay on in their positions and seek elective offices.

    Why the BoT closed its eyes to this constitutional matter is mind-boggling. Even more, is the fact that a group of stakeholders could come together to remove an officer elected by the National Convention and foist such a person on the party.

    It means that two, three, or more stakeholders could gather together and take a resolution that could become binding.

    This correspondent has seen the copy of the report of the Dr Taminu Turaki one-man committee that was mandated by the BoT to interrogate the issues. His report was revealing.

    However, questions are hanging from the report. One of such is the issue of the import of Section 47(5) of the PDP Constitution that allows party officials to contest for politically elective positions. One is puzzled as to why the issue was left out.

    The issue of the stay of execution was covered with legal jargons in the Turaki report which stretched the claim that Udeh-Okoye had become National Secretary by the time the judgment was given!

    The PDP constitution has methods for the removal of an officer, and especially one elected by the National Convention. It does not allow somebody to be removed by “Stakeholders” which is an amorphous term that could include anyone including Senators Akpabio and Nwoko, two ‘disgruntled’ PDP children.

    Beyond the legal sophistries is the political permutation going on that make some to look at the PDP as a total embarrassment. Senator Anyanwu has been accused by some to be an associate of FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike who as everybody knows is working for the APC administration.

    But we also will not forget that Sunday Udeh-Okoye, the other contender for the office of National Secretary was widely reported to have also been a pawn in the hands of Wike in the removal of Prince Uche Secondus as national chairman.

    We will also not forget that Samuel Anyanwu as national secretary turned his back on Wike in collaborating with the Atiku camp during the 2023 General Election. Even more, it is no secret that Wike did not support Anyanwu in his bid to be governor of Imo State.

    It is against this background that the dynamics in the PDP must be interrogated towards ensuring that the PDP survives the present intrigues. As it is, the BoT which ordinarily should have brought the moral suasion has lost its bearing. It is no surprise that delinquent PDP children can thus make a mockery of the party that once gave them the platform to shine.