"REPORT PROGRESS": GODSWILL AKPABIO'S CODEWORD TO HARRASSING MINISTERS FOR KICKBACKS
Godswill Akpabio Allegedly Weaponised Oversight Powers, Turned Senators into Political Hitmen and Wanted Senator Natasha to Join the Extortion Game which She Refused and they came for her.
In a revelation that has sent tremors through Nigeria’s political landscape, Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan has laid bare a disturbing pattern of systemic pressure and veiled corruption at the heart of the 10th National Assembly. Speaking during a live interview with Adeola Fayehun on the 30th of May 2025, the Senator from Kogi Central recounted a troubling encounter with the Senate President, which many now say may finally expose what has long been said in murmuring tones behind closed doors; the use of legislative privilege for personal gain. Her story begins with a seemingly benign question posed by the Senate President barely three months after her appointment as Chair of the Senate Committee on Local Content. “Senator, you haven’t reported progress,” he allegedly said. Like any diligent legislator, she returned with a detailed PowerPoint presentation of her activities, but what followed revealed something far more sinister than parliamentary oversight.
According to Senator Natasha, the phrase “report progress” was not a request for updates or committee milestones, but a coded language for financial remittance, and what her senior colleague reportedly described as “kickbacks.” It was, in simple terms, a demand to monetise her office by harassing government agencies and ministers under her oversight, particularly in the oil and gas sector, and to funnel those resources upward. The alleged expectation was that if she wished to retain her position as committee chairperson, she must convert her authority into a pipeline of money and patronage, with the Senate President at the receiving end. “He said I should go and meet a senior senator to educate me,” she explained. That senator, in turn, told her point blank: it was not progress reports they were demanding, it was money, contracts, influence. “Report progress,” it seems, is not a phrase for governance, but for extortion; a reality as shameful as it is dangerous.
What makes this disclosure particularly damning is not just the content, but the timing. Senator Natasha was suspended from the Senate shortly after raising issues of sexual harassment against the same Senate President, an action she now believes was both premeditated and retaliatory. The outburst that followed her forced removal from the chamber was not spontaneous, she says, but a response to being silenced mid speech while invoking Order 10(b) of the Senate Standing Rules, which clearly grants any senator the right to raise a matter of privilege immediately. “I was kicked out as though I was his domestic help,” she said, recounting how the Senate President ordered the Sergeant-at-Arms to take her away and told the Clerk to prepare her suspension. That decision, she insists, was not constitutional, nor procedural. It was personal and rooted in vendetta and patriarchal entitlement, laced with disdain for a female colleague who refused to cower before corrupt power.
The implications of her testimony are far-reaching. If true, it confirms that committee chairpersons may be placed under pressure to monetise their positions, not in service to the Nigerian people, but to satisfy an insatiable appetite for kickbacks at the very top. Senator Natasha’s refusal to comply has allegedly cost her her position. She was removed as Chair of the Local Content Committee just days after the groundbreaking of five mini LNG plants in Kogi; projects which she said were approved by the President himself. The Senate President, according to her, questioned several key figures, including the Minister of State for Petroleum and the Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Content Development Board, about how such massive developments could have happened in Kogi without his permission or involvement. That suspicion alone, she says, reflects the entitlement mindset, that any success not linked to the Senate President’s personal influence must be undermined.
This is no longer just a political rift between two senators, but an exposure of a rotten culture at the apex of Nigeria’s legislative institution. A culture that expects public officials to convert state power into private benefit. A culture where a female senator’s achievements must be “sanctioned” by a male superior or else risk sabotage. A culture where sexual innuendos and clothed threats are masked behind official titles and parliamentary gowns. Senator Natasha’s courage to speak up, many observers believe, may open the floodgates for others to come forward. She has called for every senator who chairs a committee to speak out, asking them to be honest about whether they too have been asked to “report progress.” In her words, “Deliverables are not tied to performance under this Senate; they are tied to returns.”
Whether or not the Senate President responds to these allegations, the conversation has already begun. Nigerians are now asking questions…
What exactly does “reporting progress” mean in a Senate where billions are budgeted but little is seen on the ground? How many chairmen have kept their positions by paying homage through returns? How many honest voices have been silenced because they refused to play ball? Senator Natasha’s interview may be just the beginning of what could become the most explosive revelation in the 10th Senate. She did not mince words, or hide behind legalese. She spoke like a woman with nothing left to fear, because when truth finally meets power, something always breaks.
By: ILUO DePOET
Lawyer | Speaker | Political analyst | Author | Pan-African