Akpabio, Natasha and the IDES of March, by Taiwo Adisa

(Published by The Sunday Tribune, March 16, 2025)

When you are reading this, we would have left March’s IDES behind, but for the president of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio and the senator who represent Kogi Central, Natasha Akpoti-Auduaghan, the seeds of the discord that have sprouted in March are required to show consequences far beyond that month. And we are already seeing the implications.

The problems of Senator Natasha, as far as we know, broke out the day on which he involved the presidency of the Senate, Akpabio, in a screaming game on the transfer of his place. But apart from that, the senator had perhaps unknowingly committed another offense, this time on national television. Senator Natasha had appeared in Arise Television and inadvertently incriminated his colleagues when he told his interviewer about the management of the Senate Committee. In that television interview, Senator Natasha was trying to ascertain her integrity when she said she refused to approve the sharing of the mixture of her committee even when the employee told her to do it. His statements ended up brushing many commission presidents with a dark tar. While the senators would tell you that the situation of the committees is not the same. I also know committees with enormous trafficking of parastali who can run out their entrepreneur in a week. What the interview did for her was to create a bank of reluctant supporters, even when she raised problems on the Senate floor.

Having had the hard blow of the hammer, however, Senator Natasha used the microphone from the same seat, he was protesting to declare that “this injustice would not remain”, while heading out of the room on March 6.

Questions have been asked if the Senate should engage in a tango for a fragile problem such as the change of seats. But, as they say, that’s what it is. The peace of the Chamber is the maximum responsibility of the officer officer. Each room has the tendency propensity towards an “axis of evil”. But it is the duty of the officer who presides over that dangerous axis. Now that this reason has not prevailed as quickly as possible, the nation is left to struggle with the growing seeds of the ide of March.

Perhaps Senator Akpabio should have perceived the danger on the day when Senator Natasha inflamed himself and like a man on white clothing, make room for anyone with a lightning of palm oil. Rather than trying to apply the rules in their strict sense, the president of the Senate could have closed the chamber and dissolve the Senate in a closed session to allow legislators to destroy their dirty line inside the room. By allowing everything in full swing of television, the senate and the nation are now paraded outdoors like the eight -day child whose denomination ceremony is celebrated.

On 11 March, Senator Natasha decided to internationalize the question by reporting the Senate of Akpabio to the Inter-Parliament Union (IPU), the global body of the parliaments founded in Paris in 1889 with the aim of promoting global peace and the development of parliaments through dialogue and diplomacy. Although the President of the Senate and the Nigerian Parliament had responded to that decision, the development does not leave Nigeria to smell of roses. This is an organ to which the country had returned only in 1999, having been suspended for all military years. It is also an organ that the country has performed badly in its committees due to the high turnover of our legislators who do not guarantee them to collect experience on the platform and grow in the ranks. So, while the name of the country is certainly not on the lips for a good measure in that global encounter, it is sad that only a relationship of alleged sexual harassment by a senator brings this country to the center of discussion to the IPI. But then the decision to report the Senate to the global legislative chamber of parliamentary women in New York, the United States of America, was an improper in the strict sense. The IPU deals with international diplomacy. They are worried about the status of countries and global peace, not for the internal affairs of legislators in the rooms of their countries.

However, externalizing the challenge he had had with the Nigerian Senate, Senator Natasha had told his colleagues at the New York meeting that was asking for justice and intervention by the global democratic institutions for accusations of sexual harassment against the president of the Nigerian Senate, who said he gained his suspension.

He had said to the parliamentarians: “I come with a heavy heart from Nigeria. But first, I would like to apologize too honorable … I’m not here to bring shame to our country. I am here to seek help for the women of Nigeria.

“Five days ago, on March 6, 2025, I was illegally suspended as a senator because I presented a petition of sexual harassment against the president of the Nigerian Senate, the senator Godswill Akpabio. I thought that, presenting the petition, it would be released and both would undergo the Commission for ethics, the privileges and the public petition for a fair and transparent investigation, but unfortunately, I was silenced and I was suspended.

“I have been suspended for six months among many other rigorous conditions such as removing my safety, taking away all the official vehicles and other objects that have been delivered to me as a senator. My salaries will be cut. I don’t have to appear anywhere near the National Assembly and for six months I don’t have to introduce myself or introduce myself as a senator at the local level in Nigeria or international level.

“This means that I am illegally here, but I have no other place to go but to come here and talk to you women because this is a wider picture. It describes the crisis of women representing political. My suspension does not only concern me, but concerns the systemic exclusion of women from the political leadership in Nigeria. This is a clear case of political victimization, punishment for talking against impunity, corruption and gender violence.

“Senate’s actions are an assault on democracy. I was elected by my voters to represent them, yet some powerful men have unilaterally decided to silence their voices by suspending me for six months. My request for an open and transparent investigation on the accusations of harassment was accepted with hostility rather than responsibility.

“If a senator can be treated in this way in the full vision of the world, imagine which ordinary Nigerian women spend every day in workplaces, university.”

After listening to his detailed explanation, the IPU-un meeting promised to obtain the answer from Senator Akpabio before reaching a resolution. But Akpabio rejected Natasha’s observations on the plenary of the Senate on Thursday. The President of the Senate said that Akpoti-Usuaghan had “attempted to embarrass Nigeria” with his speech at the Interparliamy Union conference (IPU) in New York.

He said: “He outsource the question by trying to embarrass the Federal Republic of Nigeria by going to give a narrative to the ipu-un-totally different event from what happened to the Senate”.

He said that Kogi’s central senator has circumvented the internal parliamentary mechanisms of the Senate and the judiciary bringing his accusations to the international scene.

“We have our internal mechanisms for solving problems in Nigeria. Outside this parliament, we also have the judiciary and she is already standing in front of it. Here too, he brought a petition but did not allow us to investigate. It went to court but did not allow the court to investigate. Now, he has brought the question to the international community and may not allow them to investigate. It may decide to run to … I don’t know where.

“The reality is that we remain resolved. We are respecting the law. We operate through the rules of the Senate, which is an extension of the powers and privileges provided by the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. “

Although some people may want to look at the saga as something between a man and a woman, it is much bigger than that. In the Senate, nothing is too small to be ignored. Once I wrote here that Senator Adolphus Wabara as President of the Senate had stopped a step only to greet a senator who was apparently unaware of his presence in the elevator. And when I asked him why he did it, he told me “Don’t say a good morning to a senator could be equivalent to a serious bad conduct!”

Now that the entire issue has been offered in the village square, there are some lessons to learn. One is that the officers who preside must learn to read the mood of the chamber to neutralize any arrow from the proverbial “axis of evil”. It is not all the situation that justify a show of strength or show of “presidential power” because if Akpabio had closed the room to allow the cleaning of the house that day, perhaps Natasha’s anger would not have been made as a snow balls. But some people would say that the President of the Senate has gained the support of his colleagues with a vote of trust, I will tell you, a vote of trust in Parliament is a size of the panic. Yoruba would say that enu ti araye fi n pedegun naa ni ni won npe npe ledogun. (Literally, interpreted in meaning the same mouth that says that today it can say no tomorrow). In the warmth of the accusations of Bustarella against the budget against the president of the Senate Wabara, the senators climbed by a meeting to approve a vote of trust on him, believing that any question had been resolved through internal mechanisms, but some strange called to many of the senators during the night have transformed the home, the official residence of the president of the Senate into a ghost city during the night. It is important not to turn on the fire or not allow the fire around you, so you will not have to sweat unduly. Akpabio may need to ask Senate’s caliber artists David Mark, who spent eight years on the hot place and artists of the caliber of Senators Bukola Saraki and Ahmad Lawal, how many bananas detach themselves silent from the floor in silence, to guarantee their heats. While I was concluding this piece, I heard another piece of smoke that exuded from the side of the room and which is connected to this same dispute over a place in the Senate. Once Akpabio manages to turn off this, my message is clear for him, not to start fire, because the “axis of evil” presents a clear and present danger.