I remember reading Tom Sharpe’s satirical novel Indecent Exposure in the early 1980s. The story is set in South Africa during the apartheid era. It ridicules the police policy of not allowing its officers to cosy up to black girls. As it happens, the officers end up becoming homosexuals. This story and the sexual harassment drama involving the president of the Senate Godswill Akpabio and senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan are not similar but they both ridicule the institutions that form their motifs.
Last month, the two were involved in a shouting match over the Senate’s new sitting arrangement which shuffled Natasha out of her sit. The senator representing Kogi Central senatorial district alleged that Akpabio was picking on her because she rejected the
senate president’s amorous advances. Akpabio was sexually-harassing her, she said. She went on to file a sexual harassment petition against the Akpabio. But I understand the leadership turned it down. Instead, the Senate’s Committee on Ethics and Privileges that investigated the matter, has ordered Natasha out on suspension for six months. During this time, she and her aides will receive no salary and she cannot show up in the National Assembly. The Senate, in plenary, endorsed her suspension in a voice vote. Meanwhile, the stage has widened to include the two principal characters’s spouses: Akpabio’s wife defending her husband and Natasha’s husband, a high chief in Delta state, saying he was aware of what was going on between his wife and Akpabio. Now she has reportedly file a N100.3 billion suit against Akpabio, bringing the courts into the drama. Mrs Akpabio is also in court, demanding N320 million in defamation damages.
And finally on Wednesday Akpabio spoke up. He didn’t directly answer Natasha’s allegation. No, instead he said he was no woman harasser. He loved women naturally for two reasons: he was raised by a loving, respectable “single mother” and he has four daughters he is fond of. So he wouldn’t harass any woman for any reason, least of sex. “I and my siblings were very well raised by my late single mother,” he said during plenary. “She died in the year 2000, through very difficult times and I therefore have the highest regards for women. Even at their minds, I sit right here today.” He added that having “four beautiful” further strengthens his respect for women. “ I also wish to state that I also have four beautiful daughters, so at no time will I ever harass any woman, and I have never done so.”
Here we run into a roadblock. The parties are in court, meaning we can’t be free with comments. Otherwise we run foul of contempt of court. But this we can say, which is why Natasha didn’t allege discrimination against women senators generally. Her goal would have failed. It was to turn public opinion against Akpabio – for whatever reason. To have alleged his resentment of women wouldn’t have washed with other women in the Senate. Sen. Reti Kingibe, for example, believed Natasha breached the Senate’s rules by refusing to take her new seat. The rules say that senators who leave their political party for another must get new seats. Natasha was one of five senators so affected. Four quietly accepted their new seats but Natasha wouldn’t. She was uncontrollably aggressive and insulting. So she went for the emotive rather than the factual. That was how the sexual harassment allegation popped up. How convenient! In 2020, Joy Nuniel, managing director of NDDC, accused Akpabio, who was her supervising minister of the Nigeria Delta ministry at the time, of sexual harassment. The matter didn’t go far but no matter. It was good enough for Natasha to lash on to. Also it didn’t matter that the “thing” she said Akpabio did happened in 2023.
Sexual harassment and rape are virtual weapons with which women can intimidate a man, particularly one who is their superior in the workplace. It effectively changes the direction in which the pendulum of public opinion swings. Nobody stops to ask is it true, so long it is a woman making the allegation. And if you have been so tarred before. Natasha is a smart woman, we must admit. She thinks she knows how to fell a giant iroko tree. But her smartness may come unstuck here. Let the courtroom decide. However it goes, it won’t be the same Senate as we used to know it. Its integrity had never been so dragged in the mud.
