Recent stories in some national and foreign media outlets as well as informal surveys indicate that the prices of some staple food items have been falling across Nigeria. This is noteworthy for three reasons. One, the decline in prices is not all due to seasonality: prices are not falling just because all the affected food items are in season or because there is a glut in supply from ongoing harvest. Two, the Ramadan period usually coincides with high food prices because of surge in demand as most consumers would normally stock up on food for, and in anticipation of, the fasting period. So, a noticeable fall in prices of food items at this period bucks a known trend. And three, a persistent rise in food prices poses a constant risk not just to individuals struggling to feed themselves but also to the stability of the country. Nigerians and Nigeria need this price break.

This is thus a major and welcome relief. And the President Bola Tinubu administration should take the glory, as long as the administration will not try to shift the blame if and when food prices start rising again. I have written many times in the last 20 months or so about the danger of high food prices in a country where food alone accounts for about 60% of household expenditures. With food inflation around 40% (before the CPI rebasing), my greatest fear was a food protest that could spiral in many ugly directions. We narrowly escaped one of such last August. It is therefore important to acknowledge this tasteful moment, give kudos where it is due, and pray and hope that food prices (and cost of living in general) will continue to track down. But we need to go beyond prayer and optimism. We need to fully understand the drivers of this positive trend, and ensure that we pay more serious, systematic and sustainable attention not just to food prices but also to the larger issue of food security. We shall return to this shortly.

A number of media outlets have documented the notable fall in food prices in the last few weeks. I have seen stories and surveys in Daily Trust, BusinessDay, Nairametrics, ThisDay, The Guardian, TVC, Channels and Aljazeera, among others. I have also spoken to a few people in the food business. Prices of most raw food items that in and out season are falling while those of processed and packaged food items and fruits are not falling yet or, in some cases, are still rising. The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) publishes two important reports that should help with concrete data: the Cost of a Healthy Diet (COHD) report and Selected Food Prices Watch. These reports, especially the latter, should have current prices of major food items, and should show shifts in prices on monthly and yearly basis. We look forward to the most current issues of these reports.

Ahead of the release of these reports, we can safely work with the surveys by media houses. Aljazeera reported that the prices of some grains crashed by as much as 40% in the past few weeks. On 26^th February, BusinessDay highlighted noticeable fall in the prices of beans, yam, rice, tomatoes and garri, ranging from a decline of 23% for imported rice to 70% for tomatoes. In its monthly price survey, Nairametrics stated that the price of a 50kg bag of garri fell by 10%, a medium-sized tuber of yam by 15%, a basket of pepper by 29% and a bag of dry onions by 43%. The Guardian, on its part, reported the decline in prices as follows: 39% for a bag of beans, 40% for a heap of 120 yams, 42% for a bag of millet, 66% for a bag of maize and 71% for a bag of sorghum. While prices of certain items like eggs, fruits, beverages and packaged/processed food items are yet to come down probably due to lag effect, the decline in the prices of major raw food items is significant and should be duly recognised. This is more so when it also bucks the global trend. According to the FAO Food Price Index, the prices of globally-traded food commodities in February 2025 increased by 1.6% month-on-month and by 8.2% year-on-year.

The logical question to ask is why the significant and atypical drop in food prices in Nigeria. To President Tinubu and his agriculture ministers (Senator Abubakar Kyari and Senator Aliyu Abdullahi), the answer is straightforward: the administration’s policies and interventions in the sector are working. Another official explanation is that the improvement in security in some parts of the north has translated to increase in food production, which then is leading to supply surpassing demand. It is possible that both are valid and reinforcing explanations. But it will be good to anchor such discussions on data. Policy should not be speaking and working without relevant data. For example, how many more hectares of land have been brought into cultivation due to improved security? And if we are seeing the fruits of Tinubu policies/gains, what particular policies are we talking about and how and by how much have they impacted the total outputs of the different food items? Without data and proper tracking, it will be difficult for government to know which policy is working, what it should do more or less of and how it can sustain the gains.

There have been some other explanations, ranging from the lifting of the ban on importation of food across land borders, the pausing of payment of duties and taxes on some imported food items (that is if that well-lauded presidential promise was allowed to eventually happen), the firming up of the Naira, and reported pausing of bulk purchase of grains that UN and US agencies distribute to IDP camps etc. The combined effect of these factors would be a fall in demand and rise in supply, leading inexorably to fall in prices in line with basic economics. Signalling could also be at play here. The continuous fall in prices could have prompted/nudged the farmers and traders storing up grains and other produces in their warehouses and barns for future higher prices to start offloading their stocks in order to cut their losses in case prices plunge further. This could contribute to increasing supply, further forcing prices down.  

In the absence of actual evidence, we can file all these under speculations for now. However, if one of the factors that have made the difference is the lifting of the ban on food importation/eventual implementation of the waiver of duties on rice, maize and other items, then it is gratifying that common sense finally prevailed. A good case must be made for protecting farmers. But the way to protect farmers is not by punishing the rest of the population with high food prices. If you protect farmers with unbearably high, and consistently soaring, food prices (when it is clear that we are not producing enough to meet demand), you are clearly and gratuitously inflicting pains on the many to protect the few.

Farmers are better protected when they can produce more from the same parcel of land and with the same or less effort or even subsidies on inputs and support services. Most citizens, including farmers, suffer from high food prices because even farmers cannot realistically produce all the food they consume. So, high food prices will catch up with them too. It is bad policy to continue to prioritise the welfare of the producers (farmers) over and above the welfare of the consumers.  We need to balance the two, and we need to constantly keep a trained eye on the risk to national stability. A country with consistently high food prices is just an acre away from trouble.

We need to properly understand the drivers of the current fall in food prices to ensure that it can be sustained. But we equally need to acknowledge that we have a lingering food security challenge. Nigeria steadily ranks low on global measures of food security. Our country was ranked 110 out of 127 countries on the Global Hunger Index for 2024 and 107 out of 113 countries on the Global Food Security Index for 2022. In November 2024, three UN agencies (UNICEF, FAO, WFP) claimed that as many as 33 million Nigerians could be food insecure this year. Also, the Cadre Harmonise projected that 33.2 million Nigerians may experience critical food and nutrition insecurity during the lean months of 2025. This is a 25.3% increase on the figure for the corresponding period of last year.

Despite accounting for 25% of our aggregate GDP and employing more than 30% of our labour force, Nigeria’s agricultural sector is not in fine fettle. It is a sector characterised by low productivity (a measly 1.19% GDP growth in 2024), low yields (our farmers produce less from the same size of land than their counterparts even in the subregion), and lingering supply gaps (we don’t produce enough to meet internal demand for even for food items like yam that we are the world’s leading producer). The sector continues to be hobbled by inadequate support system (extension services, credit, mechanisation, high-yield and pest-resistant seeds) and limited infrastructure (rural roads, irrigation, storage and processing facilities etc), all of which are further compounded by banditry and other forms of insecurity. The sum of all these is that even when agriculture remains our largest employer of labour, it is not pulling its weight. The farmers are operating at mostly subsistence level, struggling to eke out respectable living. Nigeria remains food insecure and the needed structural transformation is yet to happen. You can draw a direct line between the state of our agriculture and the state of economic development of our country.  

While it is important to note and celebrate the unusual fall in food prices now, we should ensure that it is a trend that can continue. But we should not lose sight of the bigger picture. We need to make the agricultural sector more productive, position Nigeria to be more food secure, free up more hands for manufacturing and services sectors, and put Nigeria on a firm development pathway. We need to see fixing our agriculture as a necessary step to fixing Nigeria. We need to upgrade food security to the status of national security. Section 16 A of the 1999 Constitution (one of the amendments of 2023) mandates “the State to promote and sustain activities that enhance food security”. Section 16(2)(d) already affirms a “right to food and food security.” We have to take food security as seriously as other countries that have made progress have. We don’t have to wait for a major upheaval to start prioritising this.

FOR most of last week, Senate President Godswill Akpabio was in the eye of the storm as his traducer, Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, who represents Kogi Central, was relentless in getting her voice hear loud and clear. Though the matter eventually culminated in the suspension of the Kogi senator for six months on Thursday, it is clear that the drama has not ended yet. The whole saga, as we have seen in the last few weeks, smacks of many wrongs and few rights. The Senate scored some rights and some wrongs, the same for Kogi senator. But in apportioning the rights and the wrongs, we have to distinguish between emotions and the rules.

Recall that in July of 2024, Senator Akpabio had compared the conduct of Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan to that of someone in a nightclub.  That statement incensed the Kogi Central Senator, the womenfolk and a number of senators. Days later, Akpabio, having sensed the mood of the Senate, spoke from his chair and said: “I will not intentionally denigrate any woman and always pray the God will uplift women, Distinguished Senator Natasha, I want to apologise to you.” That was expected of him and by that statement, Akpabio  brought some calm into the relationship between him and the Kogi senator, but as we are to discover in the last two weeks, still waters do run fast under the surface.

The latest scene of the drama started with what looked like an innocuous development on the Senate floor.  The Senate president, in exercise of the power conferred on him by the 1999 Constitution (as amended) and the Senate Rule book, made adjustments to the seats in the minority wing of the chamber and relocated Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan.  The excuse was that following the defection of some senators from the minority side, seat adjustments had to be effected. That was within Akpabio’s power. Remember that the Senate Rule book does not only empower the Senate president to allocate seats, he can also change the seats occasionally. So, Akpabio was right with that action. But perhaps, Akpoti-Uduaghan, based on family relationships with the Akpabios, expected that she would have been alerted of the impending seat change. And on getting to the floor of the Senate to discover the seat switch, she got alarmed. Was she right to flare up? No is the answer. Apart from the powers of the Senate president to change seats allocated to senators, the rule book also says that every senator must speak from the seat allocated. The implication is that anything a senator says outside the allocated seat will not go into the Senate records.  The Senate, or any parliament for that matter, is a regulated environment. The Hansards take records of every word and action made on the floor of the chamber. And so, it is incumbent on every senator to follow the rules.

So, on Thursday February 20, when Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan raised hell over her seat relocation, and engaged Senator Akpabio in a shouting match, she was on the wrong side of the Senate rule book. No Senator is expected to be unruly. In fact, unruly conducts can be summarily punished by the presiding officer. It is important to note that the rules of the Senate treat the occupier of the chair of Senate President like a golden egg. The President of the Senate is the number three citizen in the country, even though he was elected to represent a constituency like his colleagues. He is first among equals, but the numero uno position comes with a lot of difference.

A legislative expert once told me that the Chair of the President of the Senate must be revered at all times and that infractions to the rules are heavily punished unless the offender shows penitence. The rule says the President of the Senate must be heard in silence; Senators must avoid naming (being called out for unruly conduct); and that any situation that compels the President of the Senate to rise up  to hit the gavel in trying to restore order could earn the culprit (any named senator) summary dismissal. Those are the powers of the President of the Senate, which Madam Natasha was trying for size. I think it is important that Senators are taken through inductions on the rules and regulations whether they got in mid-term or at the beginning of the session. 

Rules are very key to operations in a big club like the Senate or the House of Representatives. But as we will later discover on this page, the number of years spent on the floor does not necessarily guarantee clear understanding of the rules.

Rather than go to the court of public opinion to accuse Akpabio of sexual harassment, Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan should have quietly assumed the seat allocated to her, raise her complaints through Order 10 and at the same time tender details of her allegation of sexual harassment against Akpabio and seek Senate’s intervention. If she had done that, she would have been on the right side of Senate rules and had Akpabio by the balls.  As much as the Senate rules forbid a senator from submitting a petition he or she personally signed, the Senate does not forbid any lawmaker from raising any allegations that affects either their rights of privileges on the floor. Several newspaper editors have been summoned before the Ethics Committee to answer questions of alleged breach of the privilege of senators.  I recall that as correspondents in the chamber, senators were always unhappy each time we scooped a story or blow open a report they were about to submit. Such senators didn’t need to write petition, they would only come to the floor and raise points of order on privilege. Senator Akpoti- Uduaghan failed to do that.

But the conduct of the Senate President and some of the principal officers on Wednesday March 5 left so much to be desired of the Senate. I was shocked to see Senator Akpabio rule Senator Natasha in order; he also ruled Senator Mohammed Monguno in order as well as Senator Opeyemi Bamidele. How do you have three right rulings on one issue? First, he allowed Senator Natasha to lay a defective petition on the Senate table. That’s expressly out of order. In the days of Senate Presidents David Mark, Bukola Saraki and Ahmad Lawan, we saw how such scenes were handled. A David Mark would simply ask the senator, ‘Distinguished Senator please open to Order 40(4) and read’. By the time the senator finished reading the order and seeing the order had negatived his or her motion, he would only be begging to withdraw that motion. That was not the case with Akpabio. And to make matters worse, the Clerks at the Table were also looking lost. They could not guide the presiding officer in any way. That tells a bit about human resource capacity in the assembly. But then the Senate Leader, Opeyemi Bamidele and the Chief Whip, Mohammed Monguno who have spent quite a long time in the National Assembly should know better. Their interventions did more damage to Akpabio’s Senate. When the Senate President had ruled Senator Natasha in order to submit a petition she personally signed, (against the rules of the Senate which forbids such),  and the Kogi Central Senator had approached the chair and laid the petition on the table, the matter in a way becomes sub judice, to borrow the language of the law.  The Senate Rule Book classifies that action as Matters Not open to Debate.” So at that point, the matter was no longer open to debate. Since the gavel has been hit and the action has been taken, no senator has the right to reopen the case. It was wrong of Senator Bamidele and Monguno to immediately start to revisit a closed matter and that’s illegal.

I recall an incident in the 6th Senate when President Umaru Yar’Adua was bedridden in Saudi Arabia. Some senators moved a motion, seeking the Senate constitute a panel to visit Saudi and ascertain the health status of the president. Somehow, when the motion was finally passed on a day Senator Ike Ekweremadu presided, it turned out that the motion only mandated the Federal Executive Council to do the assignment. The original proponents of the motion were enraged but they were not allowed to reopen the matter. They had to go into lobbying and eventually secured signatures of two-thirds of the Senate to re-table the matter and pave the way for the adoption of the famous “Doctrine of Necessity.” That’s how serious the matter should be, but it was trivialized by Akpabio, the Senate Leader and Senate Whip. That’s on the wrong side of the rule.

Now that Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan has been suspended, many would say she was being silenced. That is far from the truth. Her suspension was on the basis of what the senate perceived as unruly behavior on the floor. We are yet to hear the details of her sexual harassment allegations and I believe that she has avenues to ventilate that. Nigerians earnestly await these details, which should be salacious enough to help us cool off some heat.

LEADERS at both local and international levels make mistakes that reverberate with dire consequences for themselves, their peoples, and other peoples all over the world. Mistakes that leaders make often lead to wars – be they at local or international level as well. Lives are lost, property is destroyed, and the world economy takes a beating which, sometimes, takes decades to ameliorate. Usually, things are never the same again as a result of the mistakes that leaders make. Recent examples are the Hamas/Israeli conflagration and the Russia/Ukraine war. The First and Second world wars profoundly reshaped and re-ordered the world such that hitherto world powers lost their place and new sheriffs emerged in town. So, when the US president, Donald Trump, accused the Ukrainian leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, that his belligerence could trigger a Third World War, he was warning that his own focus (as the reigning policeman of the world) is more important to him than the myopic demands of Zelenskiy to continue a war he does not appear ever able to win, even with the support of NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation).

 At the advent of the First World war in 1914, the world powers were the Entente Powers led by France, Russia, the British Empire, Italy (from 1915) and the United States of America (from 1917) in opposition to the Central Powers led by the German, Austro-Hungarian, Bulgarian, and Ottoman (Turkey) empires. Russia pulled out of the war after its October 1917 Bolshevik revolution. The Central Powers lost the war and a crippling peace treaty – the Treaty of Versailles – was imposed on Germany. The League of Nations was established and the defeated powers lost their relevance and power in the new international or world order. In 1939, a resurgent Germany instigated the Second World War; the powers that fought that war were the Axis Powers made up of Germany, Italy and Japan on the one hand, and the Allied Powers made up of France, Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union (USSR), and, to a lesser extent, China. The war ended in 1945 with the defeat of the Axis Powers and the partition of Germany into east and west, with the east falling to communist USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republic). The League of Nations was replaced by the United Nations Organisation (UNO or, better still, UN) and the “big elephants in the room” became the United States, USSR, China, Great Britain, and France – the five permanent members of the UN’s Security Council, its highest decision-making organ with a veto power over every vital decisions made.

 So, a Third World War cannot but also affect and reshape power configurations on the international scene. A new world order is bound to emerge, depending on the realignment of forces and the outcome of the war. Whatever you may think of him, Trump appears to be a student of history as well as a realist. He knows for sure that the world political order may not remain the same after another global conflagration. A weakened United States may not be in a position to dictate its own “peace” to the world as it did in 1945 when the idea of the UN was that of its president, Franklin D. Roosevelt (at his meeting with the Soviet leader, Josef Stalin, in Teheran, Iran, in November 1943). Little wonder, then, that the UN was headquartered in New York, USA; same with its economic arms (the IMF and World Bank), both with headquarters in Washington, D. C., USA. A new world order after a Third World War is not likely to leave the present arrangement in place; what with the period of a weakened United States coinciding with the stealthy but vigorous emergence on the world scene of China, the historic understanding between it and Russia, and the strident move by a growing number of countries that were hitherto strange bedfellows to divert the world economy away from the dominance of the US dollar. With a new world order, the pecking order of world powers as we have it today is bound to suffer a re-arrangement. Maybe such a moment is what China is waiting for to announce itself as the new sheriff in town and assert its hegemony!

 Trump never stopped saying that Zelenskyy should never have allowed the war with Russia to happen. Whether he was goaded into it or he truly believed he could take on its more powerful neighbour, the Ukrainian leader failed to reckon with the historic mistake his predecessors made in 1994 when Ukraine agreed to give away its nuclear arsenal in exchange for economic compensation (like biblical Esau who gave away his birthright for a mess of pottage!). The Memorandum Of  Understanding giving assurances from Russia, the US, and UK to respect the Ukrainian independence and sovereignty in its existing borders have been disrespected. That, perhaps, must partly have informed the frustration of Zelenskiy;  the revisionism of Trump over Russia’s invasion and seizing of 20% of Ukraine’s territory must have been the last straw that broke his camel’s back. Before it was prodded to give it away, Ukraine reportedly had on its soil the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal (created, though, by the collapsed USSR). It is debatable whether Russia would have so whimsically invaded a nuclear-power Ukraine the way it did on 24 February, 2022.

 For both Russia and Ukraine, the costs of the war in both human and material terms have been staggering. Hundreds of billions of dollars must have been committed to the war efforts on both sides. Hundreds of thousands of lives have also been lost by both combatants. Civilian casualties, including children, women, the aged, and the infirm, are also counted in tens of thousands. Millions have fled their homes while million others have become refugees in their own country, especially in the bombarded regions of Ukraine and Russia. Now, after more than three years of war, neither side is close to the outcome it desired. NATO that thought goading Ukraine would provide it the opportunity of massing its armament at Russia’s doormouth appears to have lost the belly for a fight, having counted the costs; thus leaving Ukraine in a quandary. The Russians themselves, quick to realise that a NATO-backed Ukraine would not be a pushover, have changed tactics, resorting to a scorched-earth policy that leaves the combatants bleeding. Stalemate!

 Now is the time to count the costs for all parties. For Russia, the 20 percent of Ukrainian territory it now occupies may not sufficiently compensate for the war efforts, but that it has stopped NATO from expanding right up to its doorsteps is significant. For Ukraine: The lives lost, the billions committed to the war efforts, the massive destruction of vital infrastructure, and territories lost – all these are to what end and purpose? It has not won the war. It may not join NATO. Now, in addition to losing territory, it will also lose a chunk of its mineral resources as compensation to the US for supporting the war efforts!

 The public spat between Zelenskyy and Trump over how to bring the Russia/Ukraine war to an end is a clear indication that Europe has not taken enough time to study and understand the shift in US policy with Trump in the saddle. While his schoolboy dress to the Oval Office was inappropriate, the accusation that Zelenskyy was setup to be embarrassed begs the issue. Similarly, the show of solidarity with Zelenskyy by a horde of European leaders appears inconsequential. If they mean business, let them quickly fill the void that the US has threatened to create by withholding further aid to the Ukranians!

 There is a shift in the US foreign policy under Trump. This American president wants to withdraw resources from abroad and concentrate the same into development at home. In doing this, he wants its allies to carry a chunk of the burden that the US alone has borne for decades. That informs the poignant questions Trump asked Zelenskyy and the British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer. In response to Zelenskyy’s tantrums, Trump asked him: Without US support, would this war not have ended a long time ago? Of course, Zelenskyy knew the answer! Sarcastic Trump! After praising the UK for being a wonderful ally with a powerful military, he asked Starmer whether the UK could stand up to Russia alone! Starmer stammered! Of course, everyone knows the answer! Trump’s US is tired of frittering its resources policing the entire world while its legs wobble at home. But whether – or how  -this policy will affect its commitments to Israel remains to be seen.

 According to Carl von Clausewitz, the Prussian military strategist and theorist, “war is the continuation of politics by other means”. In order words, when politics or diplomacy fails, war ensues. Ironically, leaders recourse to the same (failed) politics or diplomacy  to end wars. The Treaty of Versailles ended the First World War, although Adolf HItler, leader of a resurgent Germany, on 17 May, 1933, in a speech to the German Reichstag or Parliament, denounced it as unjust and humiliating, thus setting the stage for the Second World War. Where war between nations ends without a treaty or agreement (as is the case between North and South Korea), the countries concerned are still regarded to be technically at war.

 So, after having lost so much in their three-year-old war, Russia and Ukraine still have to sit together and sign an agreement to end the war. It is cobbling that agreement that caused the altercations between Zelenskiy and Trump. With the benefit of hindsight, would it not have been better if both Russia and Ukraine had sat down together to jaw-jaw, rather than war-war before eventually returning to jaw-jaw?

 John George Stoessinger in “Why nations go to war”, posits that war is not some faceless entity that merely unfolds in some inexplicable way but that people go to war or precipitate war. In other words, personalities (most of the time leaders) acting on issues go to war.  The failure of politics or diplomacy since 1948 when the State of Israel was created in portions of land said to belong to the Palestinians has necessitated wars and unending conflicts and conflagrations among Palestinians and Israel. Hamas invaded parts of Israel on 7 October, 2023; the unresolved, underlying issues remain those emanating from the creation of Israel in 1948. Israel’s ferocious response was the consequence. After wasting billions of dollars, losing thousands of lives, and almost bombing Gaza out of existence, neither Israel nor Hamas achieved its stated objectives. Hamas failed to destroy Israel while Israel failed in its search for the last Hamas. Both, in the end, returned to the negotiation table where US President Joe Biden managed to cobble a ceasefire agreement in his last days in office.

 Leadership failure accounts for the Nigerian civil war of 1967 – 1970. It also accounts for the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, which is generally-acknowledged as the most credible in the country’s chequered history. At his recent book launch, former military dictator, Ibrahim Babangida, whose junta annulled the election, said he will act differently if given another opportunity. But there are some opportunities that, once lost, can never be regained; which must have informed the immortal words of Stephen Grellet (1773 – 1855): “I shall pass through this world  but once; any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again”

 What Nigeria would have been without the civil war and or the annulment will forever remain in the bowels of conjectures!  

As for the charges against me, I am unconcerned. I am beyond their timid lying morality and so I am beyond caring”, said the redoubtable Nigerian nationalist, Mrs Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, who, along with Margaret Ekpo, Laila Dogonyaro and a few other women you can count on your fingers, have been canonised by Nigerians of all creeds and philosophies as patron saints of freedom and justice, and wielders of the harmer of courage that shatters all glass ceilings.

Mrs Ransome-Kuti is remembered today and always because many women in search of a political compass to navigate their trajectory freely throw her name into the argument at every opportunity. Nothing inspires like a story plucked from your own backyard – the story of a truly African amazon.

I don’t know how much of Mrs Ransome-Kuti that Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, who was recently suspended for six months by the Nigerian Senate, has read. But she surely must have heard her story. There is no attempt here to draw a parallel between the political careers of both women separated by several generations. However, it is useful to remind ourselves – especially in this month that features the International Women’s Day with the theme: “For All Women and Girls: Rights, Equality, and Empowerment”, that women activism has a long history in Nigeria.

The woman fondly called the Lioness of Lisabi had one prime question she always asked her country: “How beautiful would it be if our women could have the same opportunity as men.”

4 Out Of 109

Senator Natasha of Kogi Central Senatorial District and three other colleagues represent their gender in the 109-member Nigerian Senate which otherwise would have been an all-male affair. Her suspension last week after her spat with the Senate president brought the issue of misogyny, sexual harassment and the rule of law to the fore all over again. The Nigerian commentariat on social media is never short of palavers to resolve.

Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan’s seat in the Senate chambers had been changed on the day in question. The Deputy Whip of the body clarified that it was a usual occurrence for members to be moved around as approved by the Senate president. But the lady felt unfairly targeted and protested, leading to a shouting match during which she alleged that her refusal to reciprocate Akpabio’s sexual advances was responsible for various measures meant to frustrate her.

Her loud protestations reminded one of Indira Gandhi’s famous words: “Women sometimes go too far, it’s true. But it’s only when you go too far that others listen.”

She presented a written complaint on the alleged sexual harassment by the Senate president which was later declared “dead on arrival” by the Senate Committee on Ethics, Privileges and Public Petitions on account of a technicality (according to the rules, a senator is not supposed to sign her own petition). But the committee treated the disciplinary complaint against the senator with dispatch, sentencing her to six months suspension despite the fact that there was a court injunction against the hearing and the defendant was not present at the hearing.

Punishment

For her outburst over the seating arrangement, Senator Natasha was clamped with six sanctions:

The Senate panel recommends the suspension of Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan from all legislative activities effective March 6, 2025.

Her office should be locked, and she must hand over all Senate properties in her possession to the clerk of the National Assembly for the duration of the suspension.

Neither the senator nor her staff should be seen within the premises of the National Assembly during the suspension period.

Her salaries, allowances, and those of her legislative aides should be suspended, along with the withdrawal of all security detail for the duration of the suspension.

She should be barred from representing herself locally or internationally as a senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria during the suspension.

The Senate Committee on Ethics, Privileges and Public Petitions recommended a six-month suspension for the lawmaker representing Kogi Central.

The comments made by several male colleagues in defence of the Senate president betrayed a misogynistic streak of a similar level of virulence as that which obtained under the leadership of Senator Bukola Saraki during which Senator Dino Melaye made many scandalous sexist pronouncements against Senator Remi Tinubu who is now Nigeria’s First Lady.

Sexism

When cowardly men are confronted with the risk of losing an argument to a woman, their usual resort is to sexist prejudices and innuendoes. And there was no shortage of such primitive pronouncements. And you wonder, what is to be learnt from a grown man who reduces a colleague’s complaint of sexual harassment to a harangue about the number of the complainant’s former spouses and children?

If, by some magic, the jury were to be open on the number of trysts that many male public officials arrange both officially and unofficially, we would, as they say, burst the loudspeakers!

Judging from the commentaries of those who have had a taste of the senatorial pie, there is a code of silence operating in the National Assembly which tends to oil the engine of opaque and scandalous dealings in the operations of the legislature. If not for the courageous disclosure of the salaries and allowances of senators by former Senator Shehu Sani while he was in the upper chamber, Nigerians would not have had the faintest idea of what many have since described as the humongous salaries of the legislators.

Sani recently revealed that some benevolent ‘gods’ had thrown a protective shield over him, otherwise he would have been similarly suspended by his colleagues for betraying the Nigerian version of Omertà. One gets the impression that it’s a cult out there. Intellectual argumentations may be tolerated for the cameras but outside that, orders are orders! It is true that Mrs Ransome-Kuti counselled that, “To be a good politician you must be wise like a snake, calm like a dove and kind like an angel. But it seems we are in beastlier times where soldier-ANTS come out of the woodwork to devour the complainANT!

Commentariat

Whether you like social media or not, it is still a fairly good barometer for measuring the court of public opinion. Make what you will of this (edited) post written by Comrade Babangida Sa’idu Nuhu, copied from ace broadcaster Kadaria Ahmed’s Facebook page:

“What happened to Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan today was a collective abuse of power. Her suspension is not just about her, it’s about the message being sent to every woman in Nigeria who dreams of leadership. It is about the dangerous precedent that allows political witch-hunting to masquerade as legislative discipline. And most importantly, it is about a nation that continues to fail its people by allowing impunity to reign unchecked.

“Nigerian women and all real men of goodwill should draw profound inspiration from her stoicism. She sat dignified to the end, in a room filled with men who collectively bullied her for daring to speak up for herself… Senator Natasha, you are indeed a brave woman. You’ll never be alone.”

If you have read or watched Wole Soyinka’s stage play, The Lion and the Jewel and then ruminate over what’s going on in real life, you can’t help but give it to the old lion, Baroka. Compared to some real life predators, he is a class act!

Quotes

1 Whether you like social media or not, it is still a fairly good barometer for measuring the court of public opinion.

2 When cowardly men are confronted with the risk of losing an argument to a woman, their usual resort is to sexist prejudices and innuendoes. And there was no shortage of such primitive pronouncements