The former Senate President also warned against exploiting ethnic and political sentiments in handling the issue, emphasizing that it concerns serious matters such as sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and abuse of office.
By Deborah Hassan
365Daily – Former Senate President, Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki, has asked the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, to stop politicising calls for a transparent investigation into allegations raised against him by Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan as attempts to remove him from office.
Sen. Akpabio had on Friday said some people from Kwara and Adamawa States want him removed from office while addressing guests from the Niger Delta region.
In a statement signed by his media aide, Yusuph Olaniyonu, on Sunday, March 9, 2025, Saraki dismissed Akpabio’s claim that the demand for due process was an attempt to remove a Niger Delta person from office. He described such assertions as “cheap politics and trivialising of a serious issue.”
He emphasised that his earlier statement did not call for Akpabio’s resignation but only advised him to act in preserving the integrity of the Senate by ensuring a fair and transparent investigation.
“There was nowhere I suggested the resignation of the Senate President,” he stated. “Rather, I advised that Akpabio should act in the best interest of the legislative institution by ensuring that no reasonable person is left with any doubt about the fact that the allegations raised by the Senator were investigated and justifiably dispensed with.”
The former Senate President also warned against exploiting ethnic and political sentiments in handling the issue, emphasising that it concerns serious matters such as sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and abuse of office.
“This issue is definitely not one in which Akpabio should exploit ethnic sentiments, political division, or regional proclivity. This will neither be in his own interest nor that of the institution over which he is presiding. He should face the reality on ground and do what is right,” he said.
“When a sensitive matter suggesting sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and mistreatment of women comes up anywhere, it evokes the pains that thousands of women across the nooks and crannies of our society experience daily,” he noted.
“Thus, when it is raised in a place like the legislative institution, it is an opportunity for us to handle it with utmost openness and transparency to ensure that justice is not only done but glaringly seen to be done.”
“By having such an investigation, the general public and the international community will have more confidence in our legislative institution,” he said.
“People like me have made huge sacrifices in defending the integrity of the legislative institution and will not desist in speaking up for the right thing to be done,” he declared.