The allegation of sexual harassment by Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan against the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, currently rocking the Senate is an embarrassing skulduggery which does not portend a good omen for the nation,the teeming mass of Nigerians both resident at home and in diaspora,the Legislative entity as a whole and the Senate in particular, with the awesome reverence,it supposedly commands as the highest lawmaking body in the country,peopled by immensely cultivated breeds of the highest level of integrity
For a supposedly sovereign country like Nigeria,reputedly acclaimed as the giant of Africa and the most populous Black nation in the world,it is highly unfortunate that our supposedly responsible leaders in the apex legislative hierarchy were unable to settle internally, their exclusive point of differences, until it would degenerate to a precariously steepy curve that would in helplessly supine stupor,leave us at the mercy of International foreign organizations for a redeeming intervention to save us from ourselves.
If my estimation, is anything to go by,both parties,that is to say, the Senate President, and his female colleague whose “excommunication” from the Senate;billed to span six months, was of course remotely at the behest of the senatorial Lord of Manor – both had their own faults which had succeeded in contributing to the grossly degenerated full blown crises which the episode would later assume.
First of all,one cannot but emphasize the fact that the removal of
Senator Natasha,by the Legislative Major Domo,as the Chairman Senate Committee on Local Content and the subsequent relocation of her seat farther to the distant backwaters,must have agitated her,to the prohibitive point of obscene accusations of such nature,being slammed,whether truly or otherwise,against the Senatorial leviathan
And when you consider the closeness between Natasha’s husband and Akpabio,which by implication, would supposedly had brought both family together as a single united family,then this indeed would unlikely not have sent tongues wagging as to whether the Senate President’s action had indeed not been informed by subterranean impulse beyond the commonly touted pretext of rituals of random Senate processes
The familial bond of intimacy referenced above could not have been more graphically portrayed than by the female Senator’s premium rendition,in which she recalled as guest of the Arise TV, immediately after the outburst of the episode – the visit by her husband and her, to the Senate President’s country home at Uyo and Ikot Ekpene,last December,and the scenario vividly portrayed,of the Senate President holding her hand as the former showed both her and her husband – trailing shades behind the two, in course of their exquisite tourist excursion – round the sybaritic splendour of Akpabio family’s “Treasure Island”
One would have assumed by this token, therefore,at least in the light of the peculiar Nigerian factor,that if there were anyone to be favoured and lavished with bounteous loads of privileges,amongst the league of honourable Senators,that person would have been no other than Senator Natasha,her female colleague in the house, who incidentally happens to be the wife of his close and intimate friend,whose friendship with the Akpabio family indeed predated his marriage to the female Senator, whose cause had been the source of soured relationship between the two jolly good friends of old.Indeed,it could well be assumed without any shred of contradiction,that the chairmanship of the Committee on Local Content,an immensely pricey portfolio conferred on her,was undoubtedly in the first place,a product of the chummy familial relations between the family of the estranged female senator on one hand and the family of the senate president on the other hand.
However, for things to have gotten to the extent that the beautiful senator,a supposed close family friend would be removed from her preferred choice seat,with unceremonious magisterial fiat,as Chairman Committee on Local Content for no ostensible reason like incompetence or doubtful integrity or any other cogent reason adduced, safe for the usually touted whims of legislative prerogative of the Senate President,could indeed not but impress as an uncheering development that leaves much to be desired,to say the least,just as it is equally susceptible to grave suspicion.
And as if this was not enough,he went ahead to remove her from her vantage seat, only to be shuffled with befuddling unceremonious abandon, to the remotest backwaters of the hall.
For one thing, dramatic curious swap of that sort,opaque to any form of logic, could not but appear suspect, considering the manner in which the whole affair was executed. This is to say that the lady, Senator Natasha was reportedly hitherto not notified of her relocation of seat,as a presidential flight of fancy,and was rather knowing about it right on the spot, at that fateful moment when the incident happened – contrary to the rule of prior notification as was normally often the vogue,and of course in agreeable congruence with civilised decorum and common sense .
Baring cogent variable exceptions that the Senate President may perhaps be a Gay or a misogynist,who would not stand the sight of a woman being relatively close-by or a Saint,who would not like to succumb to the temptatious allure of the Kogi-born stunning beauty, ever staring at the face or perhaps any other thing he was seeing in the lady,which others were hitherto not seeing – that irresistibly scared him stiff – as may supposedly seem to find credence in the light of the statement alleged by the Senate President’s Personal Assistant,accusing the Kogi-born Natasha of always being in the habit of putting on transparent dresses to seduce the men – which might perhaps be a loudly orchestrated echo of the inner workings of the mind of his boss;or even possibly an expressly direct prodding from him – who knows?- however, barring these essay in conjecture as just immediately listed – then nothing could have been more embarrassing – particularly for a lady conventionally believed at least on gender premise;as deserving more than a sparing treat of dignity.
If indeed this unceremonious shove off was so,as it was likely to have been, since no one had been able to controvert it,then the tendency, as it would inevitably boil down to,is for that unwarranted gaffe to be drowned amidst the overwhelming wave of suspicion that there was something more than meet the eye,than the usually touted theory adducing it as “a normal routine occurrence” because apart from the rough-shod manner in which she was shuffled off her seat, one would have expected that being a woman,relegating her to the back-seat,instead of a vantage point which should have been accorded a “weaker sex specie” as they would indulgently often be referred to, would not only be unfair,but also go a long way in exacerbating the ever-latent, even if subdued,chauvinistic sentiment of gender oppression as might be harboured in a 109 membership of the upper chamber; disproportionately peopled by a staggering number of 105 men as against a numerically absurd membership of only four women inconspicuously dotting the hallowed space.
Even in the developed polities of Europe and America, issues of sexual harassment by figures in higher authority did indeed transpire in the past, on more than a few occasions even as it would always continue to be the vogue,even though in more subtle manner; however, the remarkably positive feature of it all, is that it would never really degenerate to the desecrable bait for victimisation of the weaker sex.
In other words, the system would remain ever untainted, uncompromised and non-negotiable even when the female sex refuses the overture of her official male superior.
The example of Chairman Mao,the revolutionary leader and father of modern China,stands out as a cogent instance.This is to say that that the late Chinese leader,who was particularly notorious for his uncontrollable sexual urge, irrationally took a married woman living with her husband away, right from her husband in their matrimonial home,only to get married to the woman in question; but this grievous lapse in his private life would never for any reason subject him to compromise on the visionary principles of nation building for which China today ranks amongst the three most developed nations of the world.
History also recorded great world leaders like Late President Kennedy of America,Kemmal Attaturk,the father of Modern Turkey whose extra-marital escapades bordered on scandalous dimension.Back home in Africa,Kwame Nkrumah’s romance with her South-African concubine was an unhidden subject of worldwide knowledge,but that didn’t in anyway,hamper their sterling rules of value on matters of governance and statecraft,and in particular,their visionary value of national greatness.
But this however,is not to exculpate the complainant, Senator Natasha, for her distemperate failure and inability to bring the requisite maturity to bear in managing the situation with the propriety it deserves.
One would have expected and strongly too,that she should have exhausted the processes in-house,which she didn’t primarily accomplish in the first instance – which is to say that she should have relocated with unquestionable aquiescence quietly to the very seat assigned to her,and then exercise her protest from that quarters and subsequent ly see how things would unfold, before hastily going to town with an impulsive vituperation of sexual harassment;failing to realise that the accused in the bid to save his job and reputation would be all out with everything at his disposal to fight her dirty, more-so as her allegation is technically defeatable at the law court, on ground of lack of sufficient evidence.This however is not to say that the body language of the “accused” was actually not in synch with amorous susceptiblities as the accuser would spiritedly have the public believe.
We need not belabor the rationale behind the fore-going when particularly construed in the context of precedents,of which the popularly bandied amoureuse,as alleged against the respectable senate president, during his epoch as Minister NDDC – via the veritable horse mouth of the M.D. NDDC,who insultingly pitted at the receiving end;would not hesitate in reciprocal fit of deprecation – with a dirty slap dealt on the now Senate top cheese – then her former boss – to the bargain – stands out in eminently glaring conspicuity as evidentially sententious and corroborately pregnant with meaning.
Indeed these aside,Natasha’s graphic narrative concerning the putrefying vituperations as allegedly credited to the Senate president quoted as suggesting that they could even have their fun at a Night Club coupled with the ugly mid-night telephone drama subsequently elicited to full hearing of the accuser’s husband,Chief Uduaghan, are simply too daunting as an odd, overwhelming ranged against the honorable Senate president.
Our leaders ought for once to cultivate – as more than ever apposite – the sterling ethics of self-control utmostly important to contend not only with the unbridled pull of the testosterone, invincibly foisted with pitiable sympathy as their emotionally uncontrollable scourge of albatross; but indeed on a wider generic space – base impulses of any hue whatsoever.
There sure could be licence to madness,if exhibited with measured maturity and method.In other words,as simply usually put, as impliedly connoted in Shakespeare’s Hamlet;there ought to be method in madness.
“Shinning models” in
elevated public space as Senate presidency;animated as they ought to be;by the burden of honor and integrity which essentially accrues from the sacred code of legacy building in responsively due acquiescence to popular tall order expectation of the people in the all-important project of nation building in the particularly crucial context of a nation like Nigeria, the giant with a clay feet, which in discomfiting turn of paradox the entire Blacks in the remotest fringe of the universe, had often looked up to – would indeed do well to gird their loins as not only to live above board, but as well be seen at all times, to keep up on that auspicious score of moral discipline.
At this juncture,the nation’s incumbent leader,Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, unarguably the most visible politician in Nigeria and the main issue in the post-Abacha politics of the Fourth Republic – just as Ibraheem Babangida would describe the Great Awo as “the main issue in Nigerian politics” – perhaps commends as an example worthy of emulation in the sense that never for once was he ever bedraggled in the miry clay of any sex scandal whatsoever, despite his celebrated paraphernalia of immense fame,wealth,power,visibility and exposure.He may well serve as a veritable case study if only to unravel his magical immunity from a malaise which at one time or the other,had rubbished the likes of “Baba Iyabo” his “ancestral fore-bear” in Aso Rock,among others and the manorial overlord in the Senate,as we would now have as the latest on the list.
The Senate is a vortex of great acts. A theatre where great business are wrought.In the Senate, destinies of nations are changed; ditto,its teeming mass of citizens. The Senate is not for small men,but a treasure-house of distinguished gems and inspirational luminaries,fired by the visionary zeal to carve a name in the eternal hall of fame and iconic homo-sapiens,motivated by the highest flame of patriotism and burning zeal for national greatness.
Iconic historical figures like Cicero,the legendary Roman orator, etched his name in the hall of immortal memory,via the aegis of the celebrated Roman Senate,ditto, Marcus Cato,fanatically idolized by America’s George Washington – whose repeated chant of “Delenda Est Carthago” – “Carthage Must Be Destroyed ” at every session of the parliament at the zenith of Rome’s imperial Stranglehold over the vast global space – singularly instigated the destruction of Carthage a flourishing commercial city by the Roman army.
In the U.S.A. easily coming across as our model archetype, were Senatorial icons in the mould of John Spooner, William Allison, Ted Cruz, Orville Plat, whose distinguished senatorial epoch set them miles apart from their peers.
While in the developed polities of the world,a public service holder is often actuated on a progressive point of inspiration to see his appointment as a motivating animus for service,here in our clime the appointee in the diabolically inverted construct of this progressive world view,would often see it as a license for unbridled larceny and artful sleight of legerdemain to siphon as much as possible from the national till,in an unmitigated mission of personal self enrichment and on an essentially important note as an inalienable oxygen of existence – squandering a good sum on an abiding sacred appointment with professional pimps,in an unbridled satiation of amorous impulse.It’s of course an indisputable staple of popular knowledge that our teeming mass of respectable lawmakers offer the most effective stimulus for the thriving and vibrant commercial sex industry as institutionally extant in an elaborately entrenched proportion in the Federal Capital Territory Abuja.It’s of course in this sense that they constitute a burden of the most draconian dimension precariously yoked on the lean neck of an economy in dire comatose.It’s on this parasitic propensity that they constitute a burden of the most harrowing dimension on the wobbling economy. What they kept doing at the so-called Upper Chamber,one is simply lost at sea to understand, and to worsen it,as these were not enough,is the unfolding show of shame currently playing out without any prospect of resolution in sight.
*Kola Johnson Is A Writer And Journalist.
