The Special Adviser and a Consultant to the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, on Communications and Strategy, Ken Okolugbo, has blamed the tension between his principal and Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan in the Senate on pent-up anger.
Okolugbo claimed that the seat arrangement controversy which pitted the Senator representing Kogi Central against the Senate President was made worse by Natasha’s bottled-up anger for her removal as the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Local Content.
“The fact of the matter was that her seat was removed and there was already bottled-up anger because she was removed from the local content committee,” Okolugbo said on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Thursday.
The dispute which started in the Red Chambers with seat arrangement escalated, with Natasha accusing Akpabio of sexual harassment, a claim the latter has denied.
This dispute has also led the Senate to suspend Senator Natasha for six months on Thursday for violation of its rules.
“That the Senate do suspend Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan for six months for her total violation of the Senate Standing Rules (2023 as amended for bringing the presiding officer and the entire Nigerian Senate to public opprobrium,” Senate President Godswill Akpabio said on Thursday while reading out the recommendations of the Committee on Ethics, Privileges, and Code of Conduct probing her claims.
Despite the suspension of the Kogi Senator, Akpabio’s aide believes that it is not late to resolve the issue, saying that all Natasha needs to do is to pen an apology.
“The reality of it all is that all Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan needs to do is to apologise, a written apology. She has been given that window, anybody that is deceiving her to the contrary is just ruining her political career,” Okolugbo said.
Senator Natasha’s suspension was recommended by the committee which found her guilty of a violation of the Senate’s rules after its investigation.
Following her suspension, the Kogi Central lawmaker was escorted out of the chambers by the Sergeant-At-Arms, but before she left, she declared that “this injustice would not be sustained”.
