Abuja, Nigeria
Onyekachi Nwaebonyi, senator representing Ebonyi North, says he plans to report Nigeria’s former Minister of Education, Oby Ezekwesili, to Igbo traditional leaders for asking him to ‘shut up his mouth’ at a senate panel.
Nwaebonyi who is the deputy chief whip of the Senate disclosed this on Monday while featuring on ‘Kakaaki’, a breakfast programme of AIT.
On March 25, the duo had engaged in a heated exchange during a hearing on the petition of sexual harassment from Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan of Kogi central district..
The Senate Committee on Ethics, Privileges, and Public Petitions had set up the hearing to investigate the petition against the President of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio.
Ezekwesili, who is a former World Bank chief, had joined the counsel to Akpoti-Uduaghan, Abiola Akiode, as well as the petitioner, Zubairu Yakubu, to appear at the hearing as a witness.
Nwaebonyi, who joined the hearing as a witness for Akpabio, repeatedly interrupted Ezekwesili during the hearing.
Then, Ezekwesili asked the senator to “compose himself and stop making noise” and said, “Please, will you shut up?”.
This remark immediately provoked an outburst from the deputy chief whip of the Senate.
According to him, the former minister’s public rebuke was “unacceptable”.
“As a person, I can’t talk to my wife like that in public. I can’t talk to my driver like that in public. I can’t talk to any woman like that, I have never done that in my life. I respect women,” he said.
“I am one of the people that has been championing the rights and privileges of women.
“As a legal practitioner, I won so many cases for women that were denied their rights of inheriting their father’s properties because their father had no male child.
“I won so many cases pro bono. The facts are there. If you go to Ebonyi, you would see them.
“I am one of the leaders from the south-east that has a programme for building houses for widows, sponsoring their children in school. I have over 300 of them. All these are to show the respect, and regard, and love I have for women.
“But, for a woman to get up in public, and tell me to shut up my mouth and call me a hooligan, a red cap chief in Igboland that has made his mark…
“I have made my contribution. I stood for election, I had the votes of over 500 people to be in the senate.
“And for somebody who has never won a ward councillorship election to come to my office and tell me to shut up my mouth and call me a hooligan… this is unacceptable.
“I am going to take her up within the Igbo traditional leadership because it has never happened.”
