WE ARE ALL NATASHA: SENATOR’S SEXUAL HARASSMENT CLAIMS ROIL NIGERIA – THE GUARDIAN

Senator Natasha Akpoti Uduaghan and Akpabio 1024x512 15

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 sing
View image in fullscreen
Women 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 district were excavated overnight. She accused the APC of attempting to prevent her from campaigning.

Authorities said they were protecting residents against terrorist attacks, citing a December 2022 bomb blast by an Islamic State affiliate.

She lost the election, but in November 2023 a tribunal overturned the results, paving the way for her to become one of Nigeria’s youngest senators.

Akpabio, a political veteran, was the subject of another sexual harassment allegation from a former public official in 2020. He denied the allegation at the time and recently said he would sue his accuser. He had previously made headlines in 2018 when he predicted an election victory for his APC party by drawing comparisons with Hitler’s invasion of Poland. Last year, shortly after becoming senate president, he was involved in another controversy when a senator was suspended for saying there were inconsistencies in the budget.

After Akpoti-Uduaghan’s suspension, other senators coalesced around Akpabio, a powerful ally of the country’s president, Bola Tinubu.

One male senator said Akpoti-Uduaghan had fabricated the claims because she was angered by her removal as chair of a coveted senate committee in February. Current female senators dismissed her claims on national TV, while one former senator said Akpoti-Uduaghan’s claims were “a sign of weakness” and that sexual harassment happened only in schools.

“Male senators do not surprise me,” said Bakare-Yusuf of the reaction. “They mansplain even the basic of black and white to justify their selfishness. As for the female senators, disappointed is an understatement [but] like all hegemonic structures, patriarchy also has gatekeepers.”

In the aftermath of her accusation, a false claim that Akpoti-Uduaghan had borne six children by six different men surfaced on social media. The senate spokesperson said a kiss she shared with her husband on the senate premises before submitting her petition was “unspeakable” and an act of “content creation”. Over the last two weeks, crowds of pro-Akpabio protesters have turned up in public to abuse her in Abuja.

“Politicians sided with the senate president whom they believe has the power to grant them favours … and the poor were paid by those who have the most money to protest,” said Glory Ehiremen, senior analyst at Lagos-based geopolitical risk advisory, SBM Intelligence.

Some opposition senators have visited Akpoti-Uduaghan to show support. She also said she had received supportive emails from women across Nigeria, including some who were afraid to speak up about their own experiences. “In Nigeria, most women who are sexually harassed in workplaces don’t even tell their husbands because they are afraid of being judged,” she said.

As the episode unfolds, more women are praising her bravery, but few think Nigeria’s #MeToo moment has arrived.

Ehiremen said an entrenched culture of impunity was a barrier to justice. “The elite Nigerian cannot get justice unless they have alliances with the ‘powerful’,” she said. “Never mind the ordinary Nigerian.”

  • Dons Eze

    DONS EZE, PhD, Political Philosopher and Journalist of over four decades standing, worked in several newspaper houses across the country, and rose to the positions of Editor and General Manager. A UNESCO Fellow in Journalism, Dr. Dons Eze, a prolific writer and author of many books, attended several courses on Journalism and Communication in both Nigeria and overseas, including a Postgraduate Course on Journalism at Warsaw, Poland; Strategic Communication and Practical Communication Approach at RIPA International, London, the United Kingdom, among others.

    Related Posts

    NIGERIAN GOVT PLANNING TO ARREST ME – NATASHA RAISES ALARM

    NIGERIAN GOVT PLANNING TO ARREST ME – NATASHA RAISES ALARM Kogi Central Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan has alleged that Nigerian security officials are planning to arrest her upon her return to Nigeria. Mrs Akpoti-Uduaghan claimed the move is linked to her participation in the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) meeting in New York on 11 March, where she raised concerns about her suspension from the Senate and sexual harassment allegations against the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio. She disclosed this to PREMIUM TIMES in a telephone interview on Sunday. “I’m aware there are plans underway to have me arrested as soon as I arrive Abuja,” Mrs Akpoti-Uduaghan, who is still in the US after the IPU meeting, said. The senator did not, however, say which of the security agencies was plotting her arrest. Nigeria’s internal and external intelligence agencies have launched a probe into how she gained access to the meeting without an official nomination. A high-ranking administration official and two top security officials involved in the inquiry confided that the State Security Service (SSS) and the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) are working to determine how Mrs Akpoti-Uduaghan attended the international meeting without approval, who facilitated her trip and accreditation, and whether interest groups orchestrated her participation to embarrass Nigeria, its government and its people. On 11 March, Mrs Akpoti-Uduaghan attended the IPU meeting at the United Nations headquarters in New York, where she narrated the circumstances surrounding her suspension from the Senate. She alleged that the suspension was politically motivated to silence her for speaking out against misconduct in the legislative chamber and thereafter sought international intervention. In response, IPU President ,Tulia Ackson, said the parliamentary body would investigate the matter but would also allow the Nigerian Senate to present its side of the story. However, a Nigerian delegate to the IPU meeting, Kafilat Ogbara, countered Mrs Akpoti-Uduaghan’s claims when she (Ogbara) addressed journalists at the UN secretariat a day after the former ’s attendance at the IPU meeting. Mrs Ogbara, the chairperson of the House Committee on Women Affairs and Social Development, read a letter from Senate Leader Opeyemi Bamidele, stating that Mrs Akpoti-Uduaghan’s suspension was due to violations of Senate Standing Rules during plenary sessions and not because of her allegations against Mr Akpabio. Mrs Akpoti-Uduaghan alleged that shortly after her speech at the IPU meeting, the senate president sent three officials led by the Chargé d’affairs of the Nigerian Embassy in New York to forcibly remove her from the United Nations premises during the IPU meeting. “The Senate President Akpabio sent three staff headed by the Chargè D’Affairs of the Nigerian embassy in New York to evacuate me from the United Nations premises right after my speech. I was rescued by parliamentarians from other countries and the security,” she alleged. The senate president could not be reached for comment. His spokesperson, Eseme Eyiboh, did not pick up calls to his mobile telephone or respond to a text message. Similarly, the Senate’s Spokesperson, Yemi Adaramodu, could not be reached as his mobile telephone did not connect..

    BUHARI PROTECTED CRIMINAL ELEMENTS THAT TERRORISED NIGERIA – OBASANJO

    BUHARI PROTECTED CRIMINAL ELEMENTS THAT TERRORISED NIGERIA – OBASANJO Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has alleged that former President Muhammadu Buhari shielded and provided cover for certain criminal elements that terrorised the nation when he was in power. Obasanjo disclosed that Buhari was selective in determining the criminal groups the military must fight, adding that this to a large extent exacerbated the nation’s insecurity challenge. The allegation is contained in chapter eleven of one of his new books, ‘Nigeria: Past and Future’ unveiled last week. He said, “The Commander-in-Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces and all the paramilitary is the President. “Under President Buhari, serious and seemingly undeniable allegations were made that the military were not even-handed in dealing with criminals and criminal groups in the country. “There were favourite criminals and criminal groups of the President Buhari administration who must be treated with velvet knuckles and those who must be treated with hammer knuckles.” He cited allegations made by General T. Y. Danjuma few years ago that terrorists and criminal elements freely committed heinous and abhorrent crimes while the military did nothing to stop them. “When a person of the calibre of General T. Y. Danjuma, a man who is not known for flippancy, made such an accusation, it must be taken seriously. It would then appear that the order given to the military to engage the criminal elements to ensure peace, order, security, stability, development and progress was selective in location and quantum of force, including utilisation of armament “That would be the greatest undermining of peace and security from the highest level and that would make all other exercises fruitless and abortive. What a great and monumental tragedy!”

    Leave a Reply

    Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

    You Missed

    NIGERIAN GOVT PLANNING TO ARREST ME – NATASHA RAISES ALARM

    WE ARE ALL NATASHA: SENATOR’S SEXUAL HARASSMENT CLAIMS ROIL NIGERIA – THE GUARDIAN

    BUHARI PROTECTED CRIMINAL ELEMENTS THAT TERRORISED NIGERIA – OBASANJO

    JUDICIAL PANEL FAULTS SUPREME COURT JUDGEMENT ON RIVERS STATE

    FUBARA OBSTRUCTING IMPLEMENTATION OF SUPREME COURT JUDGEMENT – RIVERS ASSEMBLY CLAIMS

    I HAVE NOT DISCUSSED JOINING SDP WITH ANYONE – EX-GOV BONI HARUNA