WE ARE ALL NATASHA: SENATOR’S SEXUAL HARASSMENT CLAIMS ROIL NIGERIA – THE GUARDIAN
WE ARE ALL NATASHA: SENATOR’S SEXUAL HARASSMENT CLAIMS ROIL NIGERIA – THE GUARDIAN Treatment of Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, who has been suspended from senate, shines light on women’s rights Last July, Nigeria’s third-most powerful man gave a rare apology on the floor of the senate which he heads. Godswill Akpabio had chastised his colleague Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan for speaking out of turn, saying: “We are not in a nightclub”. But after receiving what he said was a deluge of insulting text messages from Nigerians, he apologised publicly a few days later. In recent weeks, the two have been at the centre of a political row that has gripped the country, after an interview that Akpoti-Uduaghan gave to the broadcaster Arise TV in late February in which she accused Akpabio of sexual harassment. She alleged that in one incident Akpabio had told her that a motion she was trying to advance could be put to the senate if she “took care” of him. In another, she said that on a tour of his house he had told her – while holding her hand – “I’m going to create time for us to come spend quality moments here. You will enjoy it.” Akpabio has denied the allegations. Akpoti-Uduaghan submitted a petition to the senate alleging sexual harassment, but on 6 March the ethics committee struck it out on procedural grounds. It also handed her a six-month suspension without pay, citing her “unruly and disruptive” behaviour during an unrelated argument in the senate about seating arrangements. The accusations have dominated conversations and highlighted longstanding women’s rights issues in the socially conservative country, where no woman has ever been elected governor, vice-president or president. Only four women serve in the 109-member senate, a drop from the seven female senators elected in 2015. The number of women in the 360-member House of Representatives has also declined, from 22 in 2015 to 17. In a phone interview from New York on Monday last week, hours before speaking on the matter at a joint session of the Inter-Parliamentary Union and UN Women, Akpoti-Uduaghan railed against her suspension. “This was orchestrated to silence my voice,” she said. “That action is an assault on democracy … I am not apologising for speaking my truth.” Women’s rights groups have condemned her suspension, and hundreds of women and girls marched in the states of Lagos, Enugu, Edo and Kaduna on Wednesday during a “We are all Natasha” protest convened by the civil society coalition Womanifesto. Women in a stadium crowd smile and singView image in fullscreenWomen take part in International Women’s Day celebrations in Lagos, in a country that remains socially conservative. “Her suspension and the process that led to it was a shambolic show of shame,” said Ireti Bakare-Yusuf, a radio broadcaster and founder of the non-profit Purple Women Foundation, which is part of Womanifesto. Ahmed Tijani Ibn Mustapha, a spokesperson for Akpabio, said Akpoti-Uduaghan’s petition alleging sexual harassment had not followed guidelines because she had authored and signed it herself rather than asking another senator to do so. He also said that after she had refiled the petition correctly, the senate began a four-week investigation into the claims. Akpoti-Uduaghan, an opposition People’s Democratic party (PDP) senator from the central state of Kogi, first tried to enter politics in 2019 with a run for Kogi governor. Thugs reportedly loyal to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) jeered her during the campaign, calling her a sex worker, and on one occasion attacking her and her driver. “This is definitely not an election,” she told reporters at the time. “This is almost like a war zone.” Four years later, on the eve of the senate election she was contesting, portions of the main roads leading to her…
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