The senator representing the FCT, Ireti Kingibe has said contrary to the allegation made by Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, the senator representing Kogi Central, the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio favours her more than any other female senator.
She stated this on Friday few hours after Akpoti-Uduaghan alleged sexual harassment against her by Mr Akpabio, which he refusal has led to denial of her privileges in the 1th assembly.
Speaking on Arise TV on Friday, the Kogi senator alleged that other female senators have not been with her in her ordeal with Akpabio specifically mentioning Mrs Kingibe.
Miffed by what the Kogi senator said, Mrs Kingibe denied the allegation and said Mrs Akpoti-Uduaghan enjoys special privileges from the Senate leadership than other female senators.
There are four senators in the current assembly.
Mrs Kingibe explained that, “As soon as I heard her name, as I always do everything that concerns her, I promptly called her. I said, ‘Natasha, what’s going on? I started to try to explain about sitting.
“He had not given me the proper explanation. I had not been given the opportunity to respond when she said to me, ‘I’ll call you back’. I’ll call you back till today, Senator Natasha has not called me back.”
She added, “ I have a smartphone. Before I called Senator Natasha’s husband, I had called Senator Natasha twice without response.
“Then I called him to say I’ve called her twice. She’s not answering me. I said, Oh, she went to Singapore, maybe that’s why. And then I said to him, this is not the way this should be handled.”
She explained that “the reason you’ve heard it said everywhere, that the three women in the Senate have been silent, yes, because silence is golden, especially when one of us is not following the rules. And as women, we did not want to come out publicly to say anything negative about her, and we were hoping all of this would blow over as a lot of things do.
“Now, the truth of the matter is, yes, the Senate is not gender friendly, but it has been improving much better than when we first entered the Senate, I must say.
“And the truth of the matter is, when we make a first and we draw the attention of the Senate president, he does correct it. Truly the Senate can do better than he’s doing, but there’s hardly anything that’s been done to us that’s not done to other men.
“It is more appropriate to say that the Senate is not opposition-friendly. Now, the Senate leadership may not be gender friendly, but I must say, the majority of the senators, they are very kind, and they are conciliatory to us. They look out for the fact that women. Almost all of them have been there before. They guide us on – do it like this, do it that way.
“And slowly, even I, I can say without anybody repudiating that fact that I am the singular senator that fights the senate president the most. But I have learned to do it.
“If it arises on plenary, I deal with it there, especially when it’s on issues to do with my constituency, when it’s on other issues of privileges, I go and meet him when all the senators are in the dining room, and I fight with him there and get the support of other senators.
“The Senate is a place where the majority takes the day. So then also, I want to say something – us women in the Senate, in fact, to be honest, Senator Natasha has gotten the most privilege of all the four of us.
“The seats I’m sitting in now have been moved four times. Senator Ipalibo Banigo has been moved at least twice,” she added.
She further said, “I wanted to say that this is about the rules of the Senate. So if I can point out that other women have been moved several times.
“On that day, I wasn’t there, but I gathered that several men were also moved, and I’m only here as chairperson of Women Affairs.
“I want women to know we have to follow the rules of the institution we choose to enter, and that is mostly the point of this visit here.
“Whether there’s sexual harassment between them, they already had personal relationships before they came to the Senate. Three of us had no relationship with the Senator before we came.
“I don’t have enough of a relationship with Senator Akpabio to discuss sexual harassment with Senator Akpabio. When I go to the Senate, my neighbours or Senator Natasha is not there, I collect documents on their behalf. I collected some for Senator Natasha, informed her, and she said she was home. I went to her house.
“I got there, she told me after offering a meal, that she’s supposed to discuss something with him, and he said to me in some hotel. I said to her, ‘you only meet senators in their homes or offices.”
She decried the frequent controversies in the Senate saying, “It impacts very negatively, and the only reason I came, I have been sick from here going to the hospital, it’s the only reason I came. The Senate is not a place where we are supposed to be fighting over trivialities like sitting arrangements. It’s a place where we’re supposed to fight about issues that affect the people.
“And that’s why this whole thing is not an issue. When I say it’s not gender friendly, we expected because there were only four of us that will get privileges, but we don’t get them.
“We fought to get there, and the fight continues until we can get more women in the Senate. So, if we don’t get privileges, we don’t get them, but it does not mean that we don’t get our rights.
“The three of us have not been sexually harassed. That’s not to say if Senator Natasha can prove that he has been that is fine, we will support her, but she’s never discussed it with us.
“We don’t know about it. She did not respond to the rest of the female senators. She has spoken to any of us throughout this whole episode, from change of seat to now,
“Senator Akpabio was with her, tried to talk to her so that it can be resolved. She did not listen to her. So I’m going to say that women of Nigeria have larger things in front of them. We are trying to pass special bills, 35% inclusion.
“We cannot be fighting over where we sit, and it really denigrates the institution in a manner that’s not beneficial to Nigeria, the people or the women,” Mrs Kingibe said.
The FCT senator said she’s not absolving Akpabio of any sexual harassment allegation noting, ”I’m not saying it’s impossible. No, it’s not impossible. Remember, the issue was seat assignment. If we’ve been in the Senate a year and a half, I doubt that it was the day that this happened.
“Senator Natasha, I go to the other senators, female senators, with an issue, and they tell me, okay, you leave it. You’re more confrontational than us. We will handle it.
“Senator Natasha has never discussed with the rest of us, senators and I speak on behalf of the three of us. We are older than Senator Natasha. We are wiser. We’ve seen a lot of things and I have taken her as my child.
“There’s no reason for me not to support her, even over the change of local content, I was going to take it up with the Senate president. She told me she preferred where she was, and then I dropped it.
“Before that, I was the first person to take Senator Akpabio on about the market. He didn’t even realize he had offended us until I tabled it. So the impression that she’s all alone is not right and is not correct. I’m not saying it’s impossible. I just say I don’t know about it,” she clarified.
