There seems to be no end in sight as the crisis between the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, and Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan took a dramatic turn on Friday with the female lawmaker accusing the Senate President of sexual harassment and threats.
Natasha in a live interview on Arise TV also linked the controversies on seating arrangements in the Chambers to her refusal to give in to his advances.
She said, “He has a number of times told me there are various ways we can have fun. If we traveled he has a way of making the whole house, the house, the space, he can basically create a party in the space. Do you understand ? Like a nightclub in the space, and we will have fun and all of that.
“So that nightclub incident was not a mistake. It was more like out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.”
Natasha who was visibly emotional during the interview explained that the leadership of the Red Chamber has since the controversies began, mounted pressure on her, including threatening midnight phone calls made to her by the Leader of the Senate, Michael Opeyemi.
“It was 14 minutes past midnight when my phone rang. The leader of the House called me. Senator Michael Opeyemi called me. He said, Senator, how’re you? I said, I am fine. He said, you know in the wake of all of this rancour iif the Senate President goes down, I will go down too.
“I said what do you mean Sir? At that point I tapped and woke my husband up because he had fallen asleep before me. I said, are you calling me to threaten me ? I could hear mormors from the Senate President. I could hear the Senate President`s voice at the background because I could tell it was on speaker phone.
“He said, I am just telling you that, you there is a whole lot of attack on the Senate President, and if things go down, if he resigns you should know that I am going to be held responsible. I will also go down.
At that point I started shouting and said you can’t call me at midnight and threaten me Sir. you can’t do this.”
According to her Akpabio further threatened that “if anybody over the age of 20 approaches me I will take that person down,” if they dared him.
The statement she said followed a call in the wake of the Good Governance protest, from the Dean of Agbor in Delta State who warned the Senate President to leave Abuja over fear of being attacked by irate protesters.
Senator Natasha is married to Chief Emmanuel Uduaghan, Alema of Warri Kingdom, also in Delta State.
This medium awaits an official reaction to these allegations from the office of the Senate President or from the leadership of the 10th Senate.
