• Lawyer faults Senator’s action
In a moment that reignited debate over legislative impunity, suspended Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, yesterday, stormed the National Assembly, armed with a court ruling and flanked by determined supporters, only to be blocked by security operatives allegedly acting on orders from the Senate leadership. Passing her message, Natasha said she would not bow, and would not be silenced.
“This is not democracy. This is tyranny in agbada,” she declared. The Senator from Kogi Central, suspended for six months in March over allegations of gross misconduct, insisted that the Senate is defying a Federal High Court judgment delivered by Justice Binta Nyako, which voided her suspension.
The court cited Section 63 of the 1999 Constitution, which limits legislative suspension to not more than one-third of the legislative calendar.
Despite formally notifying the Senate of her intent to resume, following the ruling, Akpoti-Uduaghan was stopped by operatives from the Nigeria Police, Department of State Services (DSS), Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), and sergeants-at-arms had turned the legislative gates into a militarised zone.
“I am unarmed, surrounded by law-abiding citizens, and yet they met me with rifles and barricades,” she said, wondering why the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, is afraid of her presence in the Senate.
Legal analysts say the Federal High Court judgment is binding, and under Section 287(3), all persons and authorities, including the Senate, are required to obey it.
Yet the Senate maintained there is no subsisting order mandating her recall. But Akpoti-Uduaghan revealed that the only appeal filed against the ruling was by Senate President, acting in his capacity.
MEANWHILE, the suspended Senator, Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan (Kogi Central), has been accused of seeking to eat her cake and have it by appealing the July 4 judgment of a Federal High Court in Abuja and still attempting to enforce the same judgment.
A senior lawyer, Ken Harries, made this observation while reacting to Akpoti-Uduaghan’s invasion of the National Assembly yesterday, claiming to want to enforce the judgment of the Federal High Court, which, she claimed, ordered her recall.
Harries wondered if taking law into one’s hands, as shown by Akpoti-Uduaghan’s conduct yesterday, is the right way to enforce a judgment.
“In my many years in legal practice, I have not seen such a display of lawlessness from a supposed federal lawmaker. How do you invade the National Assembly with a group of partisans claiming to want to enforce a judgment?
“There are procedures for judgment enforcement. It is not for an individual to take the law into his or her own hands, creating a crisis atmosphere on the pretext of wanting to enforce a judgment,” Harries said.
He recalled that Akpoti-Uduaghan filed an appeal against the judgment about a week ago, faulting the judgment and praying the Court of Appeal to set it aside.
Harries, who queried the rationale behind Akpoti-Uduaghan’s decision to invade the National Assembly, sought to know what judgment she was seeking to enforce.
