An Uncommon Letter to Senator Natasha, by Ugoji Egbujo
Their desperation is telling. A long queue of senators hanging around TV stations to defend a man against allegations levelled against him by a married female senator. They said they were not hired. But even hired mouths would have been more circumspect.
Natasha, if indeed the man sought to know you carnally, you must not relent. You are his friend’s wife. You must stand strong and resist every act of intimidation. Against a court order, they brought forward a senate hearing and suspended you. That haste is not pure. A senate flagrantly flouting a court injunction to effect without a fair hearing a sanction the courts have repeatedly deemed illegal. Good people smell a rat.
At every turn, they do something laughable. Some market women are arranged to run around the streets in Uyo to vouch that their political deity, in spite of Joy Nunieh, was incapable of wanton randiness. But often, their actions are cringeworthy. The madam of the house, who should be withdrawn, praying and fasting, files a suit in court to seek redress. She believes that the allegations are false because her husband was well brought up as a child.
And that good upbringing having been tested in Uyo while he was governor with many buxom women working with him without scandals, makes the recent allegations untenable. So madam feels directly and vicariously injured. Because the allegations may have impinged on her reputation as a dutiful wife infinitely willing and capable of keeping her man in all-around satiety. I must confess at some point in the drama, I had searched the dictionary in the hope of finding a word fittingly descriptive of a ridiculous situation where people attend to grave allegations of misconduct with light-hearted buffoonery.
Senator Ogunlewe, on his part, agreed that the sanction was unjustified and illegal. But hinted that your problems are borne of your ravishing beauty. It’s possible. After all, the other women in the current senate have confessed that they had never been sexually harassed. And because they had not been harassed, they were probably willing to conclude that you were not harassed. Theirs seemed an envious conclusion.
Madam Tinubu was a little evasive. In one breath she said the senate was a mature chamber. Perhaps it was a place where people didn’t come looking too pretty. Or perhaps a place where people swallowed sexual advances as good-hearted banter and looked away. During her time at the Senate, Dino Melaye had said he could impregnate her. The public rose to her defence against a bully. They almost exchanged blows. Yet while on your matter, she suggested that women in the senate should know how to ‘shut them down even before they start’. In other words, if the lecherous ones chose to start, it was your duty to stop them quietly, without making a fuss like an irreverent lass. That must be her conception of maturity. But she didn’t say if it was also your job to stop them from victimizing you for refusing to yield.
Senator Olujimi was also on TV. Her disposition was matronly. She said Akpabio was fond of jokes. So he must not be judged by what he says. Perhaps the jokes could include, ‘If you like my house, we can sneak back here one of these days to have a good time ‘. The kind of of lewd joke that would be all too benign amongst louts in a motor park. So perhaps you must have mistaken a joke for a sexual advance. She said while she was in the Senate, she saw first-hand the suffering of men. She looked pained as she spoke. So, I guess part of your brief as a woman in the senate is to give some succour to your male colleagues whose feeble hearts are saddled with the weight of the world and the turbulence of male hormones. One after the other, current and former senators queued up to trivialise the sexual misconduct allegations
A certain senator wrote the public. He used to be a student union activist. Now he leads a rubber stamp senate. His concern was that the public was mistaken in thinking that you were punished for alleging sexual harassment. He said you were pushed for breaking Senate rules. The senate rule you broke to earn six months summary suspension was speaking out of turn, right? And when you told them that your reaction was a result of the frustration you felt from sexual harassment, they didn’t bother to listen. Anyway, you said he had warned you that his fate was, in a sense, tied to Akpabio’s.
Some said you didn’t provide any evidence. They wanted the evidence but didn’t want to countenance an ethics committee investigation into the allegations. Even the sex-for-marks picture you painted for them didn’t make them sober. So I will paint another. If a female student deemed insolent towards her school principal raises an allegation of sexual harassment to explain her behaviour, how can she be punished before her allegations are investigated? To hurriedly suspend her before listening to her is to take sides with the principal.
Every day, clownish protesters lay siege to the Senate. It’s become a circus. In a grand obfuscatory operation, protesters protesting against Natasha’s protest arrive in time to muddle the protest waters. The real protesters are denied a voice by the fake protesters. Madam has gone to court. When you eventually get there, assuming you want to file a sexual harassment case, you will meet her waiting. The strategy is crude and comical but effective in a banana republic where the public has a short attention span and fleeting memory.
