The Nigerian Senate is far more than the upper legislative chamber in our bi-camera parliament. In more respects than one, the Senate is also a cult which thrives in occultic practices especially on matters pertaining to the conducts and utterances of senators. Other run-of-the-mill cults operate in secret and subscribe to strange codes known only to their members. The members of the Senate also operate through codes that are not entirely secret. Their own codes are printed in what senators call Standing Orders. Practising senators are expected to inscribe the contents of their Standing Orders in their hearts. For some senators the Standing Orders trump the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria as amended. The Standing Orders is their own holy grail or writ the contents of which must never be breached no matter how anachronistic they may be. Some senators especially their presiding and principal officers are wont to believe that their Standing Orders ranks above every other document in the land. Every senator is mandated to come to work especially plenary clutching the Standing Orders pamphlet. It’s not the same requirement for the Constitution of the Republic.
So as a senator when you take the oath of office and allegiance to the Constitution, you would also invariably be subscribing to senate’s peculiar code. The difference is that you may breach the Constitution and go scot-free or get away with a slap in the wrist. But if you break their code, the hammer of the cult leaders would fall on you heavily, swiftly, and fast. The hammer can be devastating and ruinous. Except perhaps for former senator Shehu Sani, no senator aligns with the offending senator. Last weekend, senator Sani said he was saved from what appeared to be an inevitable suspension from the senate for nothing less than six months but for the intervention of presiding officers, senators Olusola Saraki and Ike Ekweremadu, respectively senate president and deputy senate president at the time. What was senator Sani’s offence: he publicly disclosed the salaries and allowances of senators during his time. In Nigeria salaries and allowances of senators, members of the House of Representatives, and some other public officers could be likened to the Constitution of Malawi under their former president, the late Hastings Kamuzu Banda. Legend has it that when Banda had his vice grips on Malawi, it was a criminal offence for any other person except the president to quote or reference any provisions in the Constitution. It was also forbidden that any Malawian should speculate on the age of the president. So senator Sani was set to be sacked from the senate by those who did not elect him.
Nigerian senate was part of making a law to encourage whistle-blowing and protect whistle blowers, but it loathes whistle blowers from amongst its fold, and especially if the whistle blowing has to do with its activities, actions and operations. The most important operating code for our senators is that “nga – aha eri anaghi eri onwe ha” or dogs don’t eat dogs. Except for the aspect of accusation of sexual harassment against the current president of the senate, Obong Godswill Akpabio, by senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, nothing that has happened in the past two weeks was strange. At the minimum no less than six senators had been suspended from the senate since the advent of civil rule about 26 years ago. To be candid less than 10 suspensions could not by any imagination be said to be too much. So on this score kudos to the senate. However, a closer examination of some of the reasons for the suspensions of senators should be concerning. Some of them speaks to the lawlessness of the presiding officers of the senate, and the inclination to enforce a culture of silence in the senate. The same applies to the House. One senator Abdul Ningi was suspended from the senate last year for three months for blowing the whistle on the padding of the national budget by some lawmakers in the national assembly to the tune of N3trillion. He further alleged that two distinct budgets were being operated – one approved by the national assembly and the other procured by the Executive arm of government for itself. He was humiliated and hounded out in the guise of suspension. As it later turned out senator Ningi spoke the truth. The budget in question was mindlessly padded and two budget documents were being executed. But there were no consequences. Not from the Executive, not from the Legislature. The culprits went scot-free. The majority of senators and representatives respected the cult’s code of silence. The only code in the presidency is the president who obviously cannot go to equity. So the evil doers walked away with their financial heists. And the country muddled along in the journey to nowhere.
Ovie Omo-Agege was once a senator. In 2018 he was accused of opposing a bill for election reordering. His name was also mentioned when some thugs stormed the senate chamber and stole the mace, the legislative house’s symbol of authority. That burglary was captured on live television. The action of badging into the senate to disrupt proceedings and seize the mace was said to have been ignited by sundry leadership disputes. Omo-Agege was suspended from the senate, and denied the privileges and appurtenances of office. He went to court and the court struck down his suspension. The presiding judge ruled that the action of the senate was illegal. A similar fate befell senator Ali Ndume. He was the majority leader of the current senate (the 10th senate). Last year he spoke out about the grinding poverty in the land occasioned by the economic policies of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) political party of which he is a ranking member. He spoke to other issues as well. He was swiftly suspended and stripped of his principal officer’s role. The office of the majority leader was quickly handed over to another party man, foreclosing any possibility of it being restored to him at the end of his suspension. He was coerced to apologise before his sacking was lifted. The same Ndume was suspended in 2017 when he demanded the probe of senators Saraki and Dino Melaye over allegations that Saraki who was senate president had a bulletproof car seized by the Nigerian Customs Service, and that Melaye had forged his academic certificates. Saraki appeared before the ethics panel and later stepped aside for his deputy to preside over the committee of the whole house where the ethics committee report was considered. He was cleared of the charge. On his part Melaye obtained a certified true copy of his university diploma and was also cleared. Ndume is a veteran lawmaker having been in the national assembly since the return to civil rule, moving from the House to the senate. He shoots from the hips, and routinely talks himself into trouble.
Other senators who have talked themselves into trouble were Arthur Nzeribe who in 2022 was suspended indefinitely during the senate presidency of Pius Anyim Pius over allegations of a N22 million fraud, and senator Joseph Waku who was suspended in 2000 after suggesting that a military coup would be preferable to allowing the then president Olusegun Obasanjo to continue in office. Senator Femi Okurounmu suffered a similar fate in 1999 after he alleged that some senators were plotting to impeach Obasanjo.
Though suspension of senators is as old as this fourth republic but none has generated so much controversy as the recent sacking of the Kogi central senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan. It started with the removal of Natasha from her sitting position in the senate chambers. She refused to move in spite of pleas from her colleagues. On this score she failed because the allocation and reallocation of seats is the exclusive preserve of the senate president. It does not matter that she was not pre-informed as courtesy would demand. However, the failure to inform her of the change did not violate any rules. She eventually yielded and then claimed she was being victimised because she rejected the sexual advances of Akpabio. She listed times and occasions when Akpabio made sexual overtures to her, including telephone calls. Natasha followed up with a petition to the relevant committee of the senate. The petition was initially rejected for procedural errors. One thing led to the other and Natasha was swiftly suspended for allegedly breaching senate rules including refusing to stand up whenever Akpabio was ushered into the chamber. She just managed to submit her reworked petition before she was walked out of the senate to begin her draconian and illegal six months suspension.
Since Natasha’s suspension the senate has been in overdrive to justify her sacking ostensibly because of the backlash it has generated. Senate leader Opeyemi Bamidele said at the weekend that Natasha was suspended for violating senate rules and for ‘unparliamentary behaviour’. He said that ‘Rather than submitting to the authority of the senate, Akpoti-Uduaghan had been misinforming the unsuspecting public that she was suspended because she accused the senate president of sexual harassment’. Obviously the senate leader takes Nigerians for fools. But he’s not alone in his hubris. Akpabio himself weighed in on the matter in which he is the prime accused. He said while receiving a group from his south south region that Nigerians are ignorant of the processes and procedures of the senate, and so lacked the capacity to make reasonable judgement on the matter. The interesting thing is that the real morons among Nigerians are in government – the Executive, Legislature, and Judiciary. Often the selection of the key officers in our governments at all levels are not based on merit or capacity. The tragedy is that when they get there, by hook or crook, they think themselves as the best and the brightest. If they are what they think that they are, our country will not be the mess it is today, and butt of jokes in the commity of nations.
If the current senate is not a cult there’s no other universe where Akpabio would be presiding over anything concerning Natasha who accused him of sexual harassment. The ethical thing to do would be for him to recuse himself from the sentencing without fair hearing of Natasha even if her kangaroo trial was for the alleged breach of senate rules, and ‘unparliamentary behaviour’. Akpabio had no scruples of being a judge in a case which involves him by association. Furthermore, senate by suspending Natasha has demonstrated that it is a lawmaking body that takes delight in breaking the law. Or how do we explain the fact that there’s a subsisting judgment from a court of competent jurisdiction that suspending a lawmaker for six months was illegal.
My understanding is that a Nigerian court had since ruled that no lawmaking body is empowered to suspend a member for more than 14 days. But we will illustrate with the case in the Bauchi House of Assembly about eight years ago. In 2017, the Court of Appeal ruled in a case between the speaker of the Bauchi House of Assembly v Hon. Rifkatu Samson Danna. The facts of the matter as enunciated by a legal practitioner, Douglas Ogbankwa, a former publicity secretary of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Benin branch, were that the respondent was indefinitely suspended. She filed a suit and won in the state high court. The House of Assembly approached the Court of Appeal and lost again. The Court of Appeal ruled that the lawmaker was not an employee of the House and so she cannot be suspended and her entitlements – salaries and allowances – withheld. The court proceeded to opine that “the fixing of the salaries and wages of the respondent lies within the province of the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission under section 111 of the constitution”, certainly not the House. It said that the appellants “have no right to interfere with the salaries and allowances of the respondent serving as a member of Bauchi state House of Assembly. No rules or Standing Order of Bauchi state House of Assembly can derogate these rights and privileges conferred on an elected member of the House of Assembly…” On this score the senate is wrong on Natasha.
The clincher was that the Court of Appeal ruled that “Any member of Bagoro (Hon. Danna’s) constituency could have timeously challenged the indefinite suspension of their choice representative in the Bauchi state House of Assembly on the grounds that their accrued rights had been violated or breached by the appellants. The conduct of the appellants is the tyranny of the majority against an elected minority of the Bauchi state House of Assembly”. This also bears a striking resemblance to what just happened to Natasha.
In the instant case involving Natasha there are many things that should offend the sensibility of right thinking Nigerians. During the pendency of her referral to the ethics committee, the chairman of that panel was all over television stations litigating the subject matter in the media, and in a manner that suggested that he was working from the answer of exonerating Akpabio. Common sense and a sense of decency would have made him to avoid the media during that period. But why would he in an environment where impunity reigns supreme. How would the senate president know that the committee chairman had his back? By the way, that man is reported to be a fugitive who fled the from the United States on account of fraud. He was subsequently disbarred from practicing law in New York. Another issue raised by some undiscerning Nigerians was the question of why none of the three other female senators came to Natasha’s defence? No, they would not. Senate is a cult or at best a fraternity. Their speaking up for Natasha would be a recipe to lose headship of “lucrative” committees, and sundry privileges and to be exposed to swift and severe punishments at the least provocation of the powers that be in the senate, and elsewhere. However, more pathetic was the stance of the wife of Nigeria’s president, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Oluremi. To summarise, she said that the senate was a place for matured persons, a suggestion that Natasha was immature. But trust Nigerians – they dug up a video of Oluremi where nine years ago as a senator she engaged in a fisticuff and fight-to-finish with a male member of the senate right inside the ‘hallowed’ chamber of the senate. Oluremi was promptly silenced with the video going viral. She has been put in her place and exposed for what she is – a hypocrite. She sided with Akpabio for the simple reason that the senate president is a stooge planted by her husband in a senate that has turned out to be a lapdog of the presidency.
