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The church had a pastor who really loved the sound of his own voice and he spoke for nearly two hours. His sermon, one day last December in South-East Nigeria, concerned the proper behaviour of men and women in marriage, though his remarks were directed more at women: the wicked, disobedient women whose refusal to submit to their husbands as God intended is to blame for most if not all domestic conflict and social ills. On this occasion the pastor was unusually concerned with the marital bed. \u2018A woman\u2019s breasts are her husband\u2019s first restaurant,\u2019 he said. \u2018He eats there first.\u2019<\/p>\n
A few weeks later, towards the end of February, in an interview with Arise TV, Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan accused the Senate president, Godswill Akpabio, the third most powerful man in the country, of sexual harassment. According to Akpoti-Uduaghan, in December 2023, on a visit to the Senate president\u2019s house in Akwa Ibom state, Akpabio held her hand while giving her a tour, her husband walking behind them. In one of the mansion\u2019s many sitting rooms, she says, he asked her if she liked his house and told her: \u2018I\u2019m going to create time for us to come spend quality moments here. You will enjoy it.\u2019 In a second incident, Akpoti-Uduaghan says that Akpabio told her a motion she put forward would appear before the Senate if she \u2018took care of him\u2019.<\/p>\n
After the interview, the allegations appeared in Nigerian newspapers and on social media. Akpoti-Uduaghan was criticised for breaking protocol by going to the media before submitting an official complaint. On 6 March, the Senate Committee on Ethics and Public Petitions dismissed Akpoti-Uduaghan\u2019s formal petition on procedural grounds (she shouldn\u2019t have signed it herself), charged her with bringing \u2018public opprobrium\u2019 on the Senate and suspended her for six months without pay, citing her \u2018unruly and disruptive\u2019 manner during an argument in the Senate over seating arrangements (Akpabio had moved Akpoti-Uduaghan\u2019s nameplate).<\/p>\n
Soon afterwards, the Nigerian Women Crusade for Good Governance, representing a hundred women\u2019s groups, gave a press conference to issue an \u2018unreserved apology to the Senate president and Nigerians for the misconduct of Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan\u2019. Describing her as \u2018disruptive, crude, and distasteful\u2019, they said that her allegations were an embarrassment to Nigerian women and a hindrance to efforts to increase our political representation. Only four of the 109 seats in the Senate are held by women. One of them, Senator Ita Giwa, said: \u2018I\u2019m not with Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan, it\u2019s a sign of weakness to accuse a man at that level.\u2019 In other corners of public opinion it has also been claimed that \u2018Natasha\u2019 \u2013 as she is often called in the media, though Nigerian leaders are never referred to by their first names \u2013 has falsely accused other powerful men of sexual misconduct, and rumours have circulated regarding her supposedly colourful sexual past. <\/p>\n
There were declarations of support for Akpoti-Uduaghan, too. Hadiza Ado, a women\u2019s rights activist, told the BBC that the senator\u2019s suspension was a \u2018sad day for Nigerian women\u2019. The level of attention suggested that the row between Akpoti-Uduaghan and Akpabio might have the potential to force a national reckoning or reawakening to Nigeria\u2019s endemic problems of sexual harassment, assault and violence, and the inadequacy of institutional responses.<\/p>\n
The allegations and the reaction to them reveal something of the difficulties of being a woman in Nigeria, but they also speak to the country\u2019s sexual mores and hypocrisy, the gap between values and reality. Sex here is very much an open secret, a facet of \u2018inside life\u2019, and a currency of exchange in a patriarchal society. Whether the women who unreservedly apologised to Akpabio believe Akpoti-Uduaghan or not, they know that the kind of \u2018care\u2019 and special \u2018time\u2019 he allegedly requested from her are very much the norm, an expectation on women filtered through the political, religious and cultural spheres. We just don\u2019t talk about it.<\/p>\n
The incident also reveals the customary use of humiliation to put an unruly woman in her place. It wasn\u2019t enough to suspend Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan: she had to be verbally put down for her \u2018disruptive behaviour\u2019. Her private life has been dragged out on display for public judgment and consumption. \u2018Does she think she is the most beautiful woman on earth?\u2019 one senator asked. \u2018In my own assessment, she is not among the beautiful women in Nigeria, and it is high time we come hard on her.\u2019 Another politician said: \u2018Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan\u2019s beauty is a problem.\u2019 <\/p>\n
Pointing out the problem would seem to be the real problem: that it is better to suffer in lady-like silence than risk speaking out. At the highest echelons of society, sexual harassment in the workplace is treated at best with nonchalant dismissal and at worst with hard-edged contempt towards the accuser. Earlier this week, armed vandals attacked Akpoti-Uduaghan\u2019s house.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n