By Eromo Egbejule in Abidjan

Last July, Nigeria’s third-most powerful man gave a rare apology on the floor of the senate which he heads.
Godswill Akpabio had chastised his colleague Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan for speaking out of turn, saying: “We are not in a nightclub”. But after receiving what he said was a deluge of insulting text messages from Nigerians, he apologised publicly a few days later.

In recent weeks, the two have been at the centre of a political row that has gripped the country, after an interview that Akpoti-Uduaghan gave to the broadcaster Arise TV in late February in which she accused Akpabio of sexual harassment.

She alleged that in one incident, Akpabio had told her that a motion she was trying to advance could be put to the senate if she “took care” of him. In another, she said that on a tour of his house he had told her – while holding her hand – “I’m going to create time for us to come spend quality moments here. You will enjoy it.”
Akpabio has denied the allegations.

Akpoti-Uduaghan submitted a petition to the senate alleging sexual harassment, but on 6 March the ethics committee struck it out on procedural grounds. It also handed her a six-month suspension without pay, citing her “unruly and disruptive” behaviour during an unrelated argument in the senate about seating arrangements.

The accusations have dominated conversations and highlighted longstanding women’s rights issues in the socially conservative country, where no woman has ever been elected governor, vice-president or president.

Only four women serve in the 109-member senate, a drop from the seven female senators elected in 2015. The number of women in the 360-member House of Representatives has also declined, from 22 in 2015 to 17.

In a phone interview from New York on Monday last week, hours before speaking on the matter at a joint session of the Inter-Parliamentary Union and UN Women, Akpoti-Uduaghan railed against her suspension.
“This was orchestrated to silence my voice,” she said. “That action is an assault on democracy … I am not apologising for speaking my truth.”

Women’s rights groups have condemned her suspension, and hundreds of women and girls marched in the states of Lagos, Enugu, Edo and Kaduna on Wednesday during a “We are all Natasha” protest convened by the civil society coalition Womanifesto.

“Her suspension and the process that led to it was a shambolic show of shame,” said Ireti Bakare-Yusuf, a radio broadcaster and founder of the non-profit Purple Women Foundation, which is part of Womanifesto.

Ahmed Tijani Ibn Mustapha, a spokesperson for Akpabio, said Akpoti-Uduaghan’s petition alleging sexual harassment had not followed guidelines because she had authored and signed it herself rather than asking another senator to do so.

He also said that after she had refiled the petition correctly, the senate began a four-week investigation into the claims.

Akpoti-Uduaghan, an opposition People’s Democratic party (PDP) senator from the central state of Kogi, first tried to enter politics in 2019 with a run for Kogi governor. Thugs reportedly loyal to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) jeered her during the campaign, calling her a sex worker, and on one occasion attacking her and her driver. “This is definitely not an election,” she told reporters at the time. “This is almost like a war zone.”
Four years later, on the eve of the senate election she was contesting, portions of the main roads leading to her district were excavated overnight. She accused the APC of attempting to prevent her from campaigning. Authorities said they were protecting residents against terrorist attacks, citing a December 2022 bomb blast by an Islamic State affiliate.

She lost the election, but in November 2023 a tribunal overturned the results, paving the way for her to become one of Nigeria’s youngest senators.

Akpabio, a political veteran, was the subject of another sexual harassment allegation from a former public official in 2020. He denied the allegation at the time and recently said he would sue his accuser. He had previously made headlines in 2018 when he predicted an election victory for his APC party by drawing comparisons with Hitler’s invasion of Poland. Last year, shortly after becoming senate president, he was involved in another controversy when a senator was suspended for saying there were inconsistencies in the budget.

After Akpoti-Uduaghan’s suspension, other senators coalesced around Akpabio, a powerful ally of the country’s president, Bola Tinubu.

One male senator said Akpoti-Uduaghan had fabricated the claims because she was angered by her removal as chair of a coveted senate committee in February. Current female senators dismissed her claims on national TV, while one former senator said Akpoti-Uduaghan’s claims were “a sign of weakness” and that sexual harassment happened only in schools.
“Male senators do not surprise me,” said Bakare-Yusuf of the reaction. “They mansplain even the basic of black and white to justify their selfishness. As for the female senators, disappointed is an understatement [but] like all hegemonic structures, patriarchy also has gatekeepers.”

In the aftermath of her accusation, a false claim that Akpoti-Uduaghan had borne six children by six different men surfaced on social media. The senate spokesperson said a kiss she shared with her husband on the senate premises before submitting her petition was “unspeakable” and an act of “content creation”. Over the last two weeks, crowds of pro-Akpabio protesters have turned up in public to abuse her in Abuja.

“Politicians sided with the senate president whom they believe has the power to grant them favours … and the poor were paid by those who have the most money to protest,” said Glory Ehiremen, senior analyst at Lagos-based geopolitical risk advisory, SBM Intelligence.

Some opposition senators have visited Akpoti-Uduaghan to show support. She also said she had received supportive emails from women across Nigeria, including some who were afraid to speak up about their own experiences. “In Nigeria, most women who are sexually harassed in workplaces don’t even tell their husbands because they are afraid of being judged,” she said.

As the episode unfolds, more women are praising her bravery, but few think Nigeria’s #MeToo moment has arrived.
Ehiremen said an entrenched culture of impunity was a barrier to justice. “The elite Nigerian cannot get justice unless they have alliances with the ‘powerful’,” she said. “Never mind the ordinary Nigerian.”

This was first published in Guardian Newspapers

By Abiodun KOMOLAFE

One of the off-cycle elections next year will take place in Ekiti State, where Governor Biodun Oyebanji will face reelection. Oyebanji has several strengths to leverage when campaigning begins, particularly his efforts to redirect the state’s political economy in a positive direction, as widely acknowledged by conventional wisdom.

Ekiti State has navigated the current economic transformation in very steady ways. The state’s poverty level is relatively manageable, rather than crippling. The governor’s strategic intervention in agriculture has built up buffers of price-modulating as well as supply-adjustment mechanisms. This approach has effectively withstood economic headwinds, serving as a model that other states would do well to emulate.

In many ways, Oyebanji’s agricultural policies echo those of Gabriel Akinola Deko, a former Minister of Agriculture from neighbouring Ondo State. Deko, known for his astuteness, established Marketing and Commodity Boards to shield the masses from inflationary pressures. Oyebanji continues this approach!

The governor also excels in two key areas: infrastructural development and management of the political class. His efforts have secured the Federal Government’s approval for the reconstruction of the Ado-Iyin-Igede-Aramoko Itawure Road. The Bola Tinubu government has allocated N5.4 billion for this project, aiming to enhance connectivity and economic growth. As the state's resources continue to improve, the expectation is that the ongoing Ado-Ekiti Ring Road project, connecting the new airport, will also be dualized.

The dynamics of Ekiti State provide the incumbent governor with a highly favourable position, particularly in terms of electoral advantage. In a country seething in the grip of its own helplessness, Oyebanji has proven himself to be a quality leader! Fortunately for him, but unfortunately for the polity, there is currently no coherent alternative emerging from the grassroots to convincingly challenge his position.

To upset an incumbent, one needs a coherent position, even if the incumbent is laughably incompetent. It is tragic that no such alternative position is in the offing, which says a lot about the current state of politics, not just in Ekiti State but nationwide.

May the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, grant us peace in Nigeria!

*KOMOLAFE wrote from Ijebu-Jesa, Osun State, Nigeria (ijebujesa@yahoo.co.uk)

By Abiodun KOMOLAFE

We are at midterm, which means that the next electoral cycle has already started. Unfortunately, governance will begin to slow down as politicking and jockeying for advantage become more pronounced, distracting from the real work of administration and the quest to achieve sustainable development.

The ruling party currently holds a significant advantage, facing an ill-defined and unfocused array of interest groups lacking cohesion. Unlike parliamentary systems, presidential systems don’t truly have an opposition; concept. Instead, they offer a focused alternative platform, presenting a distinct and more positive stance than the governing party’s. It sums it all that, within the reality of a very difficult economic crisis, there is no realistic, properly-costed alternative on offer. This is a clear indication of intellectual indolence and the absence of political parties showing up our present reality that what we have are Special Purpose
Vehicles (SPVs).

To understand the 2027 outlook, we need to examine past election data, shifting alliances and current trends. One key point from the past data is that the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), now President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, got 63% of his total votes from the 1966 Northern Region. This raises important questions: What does this mean if there's growing disaffection with the current administration in the North and how will this impact the national majority that brought Tinubu to power?

Assuming, of course, that there's genuine disaffection in the North, rather than just posturing by those seeking advantage, it’s essential to recognize that there’s no ‘monolithic North’. So, the strength of the Tinubu coalition will vary significantly from state to state. In Kaduna, for instance, the APC is currently gaining ground due to defections, despite Abubakar Atiku’s comfortable win in the last presidential election.

Given these dynamics, projections suggest Tinubu will win Kaduna by a comfortable margin in 2027, particularly as Southern Kaduna appears to be shifting towards the APC for the first time. The dynamics will shift from state to state, requiring analysis from this perspective, particularly as it affects senatorial and local government elections. With an expanding base in the South, the odds strongly favour Tinubu’s reelection by a convincing margin. Furthermore, the opposition’s disorganization and focus on personalities rather than programs undermine
their effectiveness.

Had Nigeria been blessed with a robust opposition, it would likely have by now replicated the ‘Popular Front’ model, which was successfully done in Europe and Latin America in the past. This approach, which originated in the 1920s, reached its peak with Salvador Allende Gossens’ victory in Chile in 1971, and the subsequent formation of a Government of Popular Unity. A Popular Front is essentially an alliance of diverse groups, activists, political parties, and Civil Society Organizations (CSOs). In Latin America, it incorporated the LT, which was rooted in the Catholic Church. The Popular Front's key strength lay in its clearly-defined alternative economic program, which aimed to achieve macro-economic stability as a means to attain social justice.

Influential figures like Pope Francis and St. Karol Józef Wojtyła emerged from the Liberation Theology Movement (LT). Other prominent figures associated with this movement include St. Óscar Romero, Jamie Cardinal Sin, Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo and Jean-Bertrand Aristide. This movement was particularly powerful in Latin American countries like Brazil, Argentina and Mexico. It was similar to Nigeria’s National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), with
its own political, socioeconomic and related programmes.

In today’s Nigeria, many of those competing for power have no intention of forming a popular front that would lead to a government of popular unity. Otherwise, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) wouldn’t have been so entangled in the Godswill Akapbio/Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan drama at a time when Sunday Jackson, who had killed his attacker, was facing a Supreme Court ruling upholding his conviction. If you ask CAN about Leah Sharibu’s whereabouts, they might respond flippantly, saying she’s sipping ‘fura de nono’ in its coldest state, somewhere in the Sambisa Forest. Similarly, inquire about what has come out of the senseless murder of Deborah Samuel,
and the usual refrain, ‘God gives, God takes; glory be to God’, would rent the air! It is that bad; and it is
sad!

For the religious leaders, religion is more of a means to an end even as the followers continue to wallow in self-deceit. The sanctity of traditional thrones in Nigeria has also been carelessly and dangerously politicized that any Ganduje could just wake up from the ‘other room’ and disrupt an age-old system without considering the consequences of his actions. So, how do we develop a society in the midst of all kinds of social-yet-avoidable threats?

Without an alternative perspective and the formation of a unified popular front, 2027 is looking like it’s going to be an anticlimax. Why? There will be gales of decamping to the ruling party, eliminating any impetus for policy review. It therefore means that Nigeria is actually between a rock and a hard place, with an opposition driven by self-interest rather than a genuine desire to provide alternative solutions and position itself as a viable government-in-waiting. Even Organized Labour today resembles what Karl Marx described as “an aristocracy of labour”, rather than an organization fighting for sustainable development and the continuous elevation of living standards. The country will have to grin and bear it, for such is the nature of a political economy that’s based on rent seeking, rather than building a sustainable production base.

Tinubu’s reelection in 2027 appears certain, and one doesn’t need to be a soothsayer or visit Okija Shrine to foresee this outcome. As Detective Sherlock Holmes would say, “Elementary logic, Watson!”

May the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, grant us peace in Nigeria!

*KOMOLAFE wrote from Ijebu-Jesa, Osun State, Nigeria ( ijebujesa@yahoo.co.uk )