…ex-Edo gov recants, apologises to Senate

There is confusion in the Senate as the Senator representing the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Ireti Kingibe, has admitted that she neither saw nor signed the investigation report that led to the suspension of Kogi Central Senator, Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, on 6 March 2025.

This came barely 24 hours after Senator Adams Oshiomhole disclosed in a televised interview that a senator (Kingibe) had informed him in 2025 that the signatures of some senators believed to have signed the report were forged or attached without their consent.

However, while Oshiomhole, who represents Edo North, recanted the claim in a separate statement issued in Abuja and apologised, Kingibe, on the other hand, confirmed that Oshiomhole’s comments were true, insisting that she did not sign the report.

Speaking during an Arise News interview, Kingibe disclosed, “I never saw the report that led to Natasha’s suspension. I was at a retreat. I had earlier stated that I was there with three or four other senators who are members of the committee.”

The investigation that led to Akpoti-Uduaghan’s suspension was conducted by the Committee on Ethics, Privileges and Public Petitions, chaired by Senator Neda Imaseun.

Kingibe stated that although she signed the attendance register at the committee’s meeting and later left for what she described as a more important hearing on the tax reform bill, she never saw the committee’s final report.

The senator noted, “We attended the Committee on Petitions and Public Complaints, signed the attendance register, and I later left for the tax reform retreat, which I considered more important at the time.

“It affects my constituents much more than disciplining a senator, and I figured that the other people who were not part of that committee would take care of it.”

Findings, however, indicated that Kingibe’s name and signature appeared as number 21 on the final report, which she has now denied signing, further deepening the confusion.

Oshiomhole, in a statement issued in Abuja, denied saying that any senator had told him that signatures attached to the report were forged.

“The only comment I made is that one senator who is a member of the committee claimed that the attendance signatures of some senators were attached to the final report,” he said.

“Any suggestion to the effect that I alleged that any senator’s signature was forged is completely untrue and should be disregarded.

The former Edo State governor added, “Finally, I regret if my comment may have caused embarrassment to any senator or to the 10th Senate as an institution.”

Akpoti-Uduaghan was suspended by the Senate for six months for misconduct and insubordination during plenary on 20 February 2025, when the lawmaker protested loudly against the change of her seating position in the chamber.

Amid the investigation that subsequently led to her suspension, she made sexual harassment allegations against the President of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio, but the panel did not establish proof of the claims.

The suspension returned to the front burner recently after Oshiomhole faced backlash from the Senate over his remarks during the probe into the NNPCL’s “uncounted N210 trillion”, in which he described the company as “a home of thieves”.

The Senate subsequently passed a resolution disowning Oshiomhole and his comments on the NNPCL.

The senator, while responding to an interview question, referred to the suspension of Akpoti-Uduaghan as “one of the low points of the 10th Senate”, recalling how a senator had told him that the signatures attached to the committee’s final report were allegedly forged. (TRIBUNE)