By Richard Efiong
Time has a way of bending itself around those who wait, stretching seconds into hours, days into years, when the weight of uncertainty presses down like a leaden sky. For Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, the suspended senator from Kogi Central, these six months of exile must feel like an endless purgatory, a sentence without reprieve, a silence where there should be more voice.
The Senate on March 6, 2025, suspended Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, the Senator representing Kogi Central over what it termed gross misconduct. The Senate delivered a decree with the finality of a judge’s gavel- it did not merely suspend her; it erased her, stripping away her security, her office, her salary, even the right to call herself a senator beyond Nigeria’s borders. And now, as if to twist the knife, comes the farcical theatre of a recall petition, an exercise so historically futile, one that feels less like democracy and more like a slow, deliberate humiliation.
The Independent National Electoral Commission, ever the cautious custodian of Nigeria’s fragile electoral rituals, has already spotted the cracks in this latest attempt. The petition by a group who called themselves the Concerned Kogi Youth and Women, arrived at INEC’s doorstep on Monday, 24th of March, with six bulging sacks of signatures, a performative gesture meant to mimic popular will.
But democracy is not conjured by weight alone. The petition lacked the most basic incantations, phone numbers, email addresses, exact locations, the very threads that tether such exercises to legitimacy. The covering letter listed only “Okene, Kogi State” as an address, as though one could summon the spirit of accountability by shouting into the wind. INEC, in its bureaucratic prose, noted the omission, but the message was clear: this recall is less an organic uprising than a staged performance, one that joins the graveyard of failed attempts before it.
Yet in this saga, one institution deserves commendation: INEC under President Bola Tinubu’s administration has demonstrated admirable due diligence. While political actors rush to judgment, the electoral body meticulously noted the recall petition’s fatal flaws – missing contacts, dubious signatures, and procedural defects. Their refusal to be stampeded into action shows institutional integrity in turbulent times.
History, after all, is an unforgiving witness. Since 1999, Nigeria has seen no fewer than six attempts to recall national lawmakers, each collapsing under the weight of its own absurdity. Dino Melaye’s recall in 2018 was a spectacle of tragicomedy, 189,870 signatures submitted, only 18,742 verified, the rest vanishing like morning mist. Ali Ndume’s recall in Borno South was smothered by political resistance before it could even take breath. Others, Farouk Lawan, Abdulmumin Jibrin, Chris Ngige, saw their recall petitions dissolve into nothingness, half-hearted attempts buried by disinterest or design.
And now, Natasha’s opponents, draped in the flimsy banner of “concerned citizens,” march forward with the same doomed script. The irony is almost poetic: a woman suspended for speaking too loudly now faces an attempt to erase her completely, one that will likely fail, leaving her in limbo, neither fully recalled nor fully reinstated, just suspended, waiting, forgotten.
But the true cruelty lies not in the recall’s improbability, but in the suspension itself, a punishment so total it feels like erasure. They have taken from her everything but the title, and even that she cannot use beyond whispers. No office. No aides. No voice in the chamber where she once stood. The Senate dangled the possibility of return, if only she would bend the knee, if only she would swear filthy and apologise. But Natasha is not one for forced repentance. She is the woman who stood in the belly of the beast and accused Senate President Godswill Akpabio of sexual harassment, an allegation that still hums beneath the surface of every political conversation in Abuja, no matter how much official denial tries to smother it. Instead of retreating, she has taken her fight beyond Nigeria’s borders, to the Inter-Parliamentary Union in New York, framing her suspension as raw political vengeance. Akpabio denies it all, of course, but the whispers remain, clinging to the Senate’s marbled halls like old ghosts.
Yes, Natasha may have crossed lines. She may have broken rules. But in a institution where men routinely commit greater offenses with mere slaps on wrists, her punishment stands out for its cruel excessiveness. They demand an apology while systematically dismantling her career – the legislative equivalent of asking a man to beg for mercy while holding a gun to his head
For her constituents, the suspension is a different kind of wound. Six months without representation in a country where political absence is an invitation for neglect. Six months where projects stall, where voices go unheard, where the delicate balance of patronage tilts against them. Some have protested, decrying the injustice, but their cries are muffled by the larger machinery of power. The recall petition, flawed as it is, only adds insult to injury, a pantomime of democracy that mocks the very idea of accountability.
And so Natasha waits. The recall will likely fade, as all others have. The suspension will one day lift. But time moves differently for those in exile. Six months is nothing in the grand calculus of Nigerian politics, a blink, a pause, a comma in a never-ending sentence. But for her, and for those who pinned their hopes on her, it is an eternity.
Recalling her might take forever. But her suspension? That already feels like it has lasted a lifetime. Natasha fate hangs in her wit and ability to do something differently to turn back the hands of time for her return to the red chamber of the National Assembly, where she will sit before her tormentors, including Goodswill Akpabio to tell her stories completely.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not represent the editorial position of Spear News.
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