Senator Ireti Kingibe, representing the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), has countered Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan’s claim about the seating reassignment in the Senate.
Senator Natasha recently sparked a controversy in the Red Chamber when the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, reallocated her seat.
Her reaction to the seating arrangement sparked drama in the Senate during plenary as the lawmaker representing Kogi Central refused to move to the new seat assigned to her.
Natasha later raised her hand to speak but was denied recognition because she was not speaking from the seat assigned to her.
Angered by this, she raised her voice in protest, accusing Akpabio of denying her of her privilege.
Subsequently, the Senate unanimously voted to refer her to the Committee on Ethics, Privileges, and Public Petitions for disciplinary review.
However, while appearing on Arise TV on Friday, February 28, 2025, Senator Natasha claimed that the seating arrangement was part of a ploy to frustrate legislative duties.
She also accused Senator Akpabio of sexual harassment, alleging that the Senate President has, on two occasions, demanded an intimate relationship from her.
Reacting to Natasha’s claim about the seating arrangement, Kingibe, while appearing on Arise TV on Friday, carpeted the Kogi Senate, saying she doesn’t follow the Senate rules.
She said the three other female senators have been silent about the seating arrangement row because they don’t want to say anything negative about Natasha.
“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 will blow over, as a lot of things do,” the Labour Party Senator said.
She added, “The Senate is not a place where we are supposed to fight over trivialities like seating arrangements.”
According to Kingibe, Natasha was not the only lawmaker whose seat was moved. She disclosed that other lawmakers were affected by the seating reassignment.
“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,” she said.
The chairperson of the Senate Committee on Women Affairs admitted that the Senate is not gender-friendly, but she said the situation has improved.
She said, “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 fuss and draw the attention of the Senate president, he corrects 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.”
Kingibe appealed to women, saying, “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.”
