The suspended senator representing Kogi Central Senatorial District, Sen. Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, says she will approach the appellate court for interpretation of the legal impasse between her and the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio.
Akpoti-Uduaghan made this known while speaking with newsmen in Abuja on Tuesday after being refused entrance into the National Assembly Complex by security personnel.
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the suspended senator had on Tuesday defied a heavy security blockade and arrived at the National Assembly complex on foot from the MOPOL gate, accompanied by a crowd of supporters.
The lawmaker, whose suspension by the senate is being contested in court, parked her vehicle outside the National Assembly premises and walked through the main MOPOL gate in company with some activists, including Aisha Yesufu.
Speaking with newsmen, Akpoti-Uduaghan, who defied the rain, insisted that her suspension was not only unjust but also procedurally flawed.
“Even the suspension, ab initio, was fraudulent. The document that recommended my suspension wasn’t even attested to by the committee members. It was just a photocopy of an attendance sheet passed off as their signatures.
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“There is no reason whatsoever, contrary to the publications that I read yesterday (Monday), that I should not resume today because the senate has appealed my suspension judgment.
“That’s wrong. What I appealed is the contempt, and that is separate. The judgment came in two parts.
“One was to address the contempt, which is based on the satirical apology letter which I made on Facebook, which the judge thought it wise in her own stride that amounts to contempt.
“But I’m saying clearly that that doesn’t amount to contempt of court because before Justice Binta Nyako was not the matter of sexual harassment; it was the matter of suspension,” she said.
The senator said that if she decided to go back home, that did not mean that she was not unaware of the fact that the National Assembly would go into a two-month recess, beginning from Wednesday.
“If we decide to turn our backs and go home, we are not ignorant of the fact that the National Assembly is most likely going to go into recess tomorrow (Wednesday) for two months.
“And they will resume pretty much in the last week of September, and, like you rightly said, that means I would have pretty much served the six-month suspension.
“I’m saying that because as of now, I’m no longer suspended. And there’s something very important I would like to say: that even the suspension, ab initio, was fraudulent,” she said. NAN
