By Lasisi Olagunju

“Possibly he cohabited with Miss Bloggs, but don’t mention it in front of his wife, let the sleeping dogs lie.” Gordon Jarvie’s ‘Dictionary of Idioms’ contains that example of a warning that has been with us since Geoffrey Chaucer’s 1385 epic poem, Troilus and Criseyde. When the storm is angry and howling, the wise stays safe. I thought every man has that wisdom until I heard Senate President Godswill Akpabio at the weekend in Abuja vowing to devour a bowl of very hot 20-year-old pounded yam. To him, the sleeping dog must stop sleeping.

For some people, one trouble at a time is not enough. I count Akpabio among such persons. The tough meat in his mouth, he has not finished chewing, he is sinking his teeth into a tougher thigh. The mouthful wahala from delectable Senator Natasha is not enough; voracious Akpabio must do Oliver Twist; he wants one more problem to solve. He threatened at the weekend to sue former acting Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Joy Nunieh, over her 2020 allegations of sexual harassment leveled against him. Where are Akpabio’s younger friends? They should read to him Harry Porter’s exasperation: “And quite honestly, I’ve had enough trouble for a lifetime.”

In July 2020, Nunieh alleged that she slapped Akpabio, who was then the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, because he allegedly sexually harassed her:

“Why did he not tell Nigerians that I slapped him in his guest house at Apo? I am the only Ogoni woman, the only Nigerian woman that has slapped him. I slapped him because of his plan B. Since he couldn’t get me to take that money, he thought that he could come up on me,” Nunieh told Arise TV at the time and proceeded to explain that sexual harassment was what she meant by “come up on me.”

For five years, Akpabio slumbered and snored. A slap from a lady called Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan appears to have now woken up Nigeria’s number one lawmaker. Addressing the matter at the weekend, Akpabio announced his intention to take legal action against Nunieh. “My other sister, the one they sometimes refer to as Joy Nunieh, I will like to mention her name because she will be hearing from my lawyer anytime in the next one week. Crime never dies.”

When is trouble enough? And, does the right to seek judicial remedies exist forever? By July this year, it will be five years since Nunieh made her sensational slap statement. She uttered the claim, Akpabio pretended she said nothing significant. Akpabio is a lawyer. At the law school, his teachers taught him that rights of action are subject to specific time frames. The cause of action occurred in Abuja. The Limitation Act which applies in Abuja, what does it say on when a man is barred from suing for defamation of character? Or does Akpabio want to approach this as a criminal offence which is not statute-barred, especially now that he is Nigeria’s very powerful number three citizen? In that case, it won’t be a case of “hearing from (his) lawyers”. It will be a case of the slapper hearing from the very duteous Nigeria police. We cannot wait.

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Sixteenth/seventeenth century English writer and physician, Thomas Fuller, has a line for strong, big men who think they are bigger than the biggest, stronger than the strongest: “Be ye never so high, the law is above you.” These exact words came handy for Lord Denning, Master of the Rolls, when he had to rule against the Attorney General for England and Wales in a 1977 case. In full he invoked the spirit of Fuller and cast his potent words “to every subject of this land, however powerful.” But that was in a democracy. What we have here, is it democracy or the craze of the demos?

What should be a leader’s reaction to attacks and allegations? The British House of Lords in 1987 delivered a controversial judgment backing the ban of Spycatcher, the memoirs of a former MI5 officer, Peter Wright. The Daily Mirror reacted with an upside down photo of the three law lords who decided the case in favour of Margaret Thatcher’s government. The picture came with the caption: ‘You Old Fools.’ Many thought that was insulting and contemptuous of the court. But, the Law Lord, Sydney William Templeman, did not think so. The lord noted that the caption contained three words ‘You’, ‘Old’ and ‘Fools’. The world might think the caption offensive but to my lord, they were not. Templeman said it was indeed true that he was an old man. He said being a fool or not was a matter of perception but he knew he was not a fool. He caused the matter to end right there.

Sir Alexander Cockburn was England’s Lord Chief Justice in 1879. He was incensed at scathing criticisms of one of his rulings. He thought the right course to take was to use his high office and his knowledge of the law to take down his critics. Cockburn did the very unusual: he published a 24-page pamphlet in rebuttal of the strictures and thoroughly abused his critics. But his pamphlet did not help him; his rebuttal attracted a string of counter rebuttals. Records say that the Lord Chief Justice came out of that controversy diminished in social and intellectual standing. Roderick Munday who went over that case again in 1987, wrote that “this unedifying episode illustrates how even the holder of the highest office can make a spectacle of himself.” Munday’s conclusion is that “if ever a judge again feels disposed to respond to public strictures, he might first do well to ponder the experience of Cockburn C.J.”

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A man in a hole is still digging. Senator Akpabio thinks an old and long-forgotten war is worth exhuming. He must combine it with the present and have both crushed. Good luck to him.

Can I now examine how he is handling the present problem? Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan accused Akpabio of sexual harassment. Akpabio kept quiet for almost a week; when he spoke, it was as a judge in his own case. His wife and almost the whole of the Senate were the first to come out roaring. Without investigation, they said Akpabio did not do what he was accused of doing. They said the lady had assaulted the integrity of their presiding officer. They were very rancorous like passengers in a midair troubled plane.

One of the senators said Natasha should use the period of her suspension to learn the Senate rules. I found that quite ironic. It will be appropriate if that member and other members learn what the law says about a man sitting in judgment over his own case. Or, what did they think happened when Mr Akpabio appointed the jury, sat as the judge, read his judgment and convicted his accuser? If you are accused of harbouring unsightly intestines, why wouldn’t you use common sense to pack them well and far from public sneer?

The convicted is already shouting fair hearing. A first year law student knows that the Latin phrase, ‘Nemo Judex In Causa Sua’ means no one should be a judge in his own cause. It is a universal principle of fair hearing that in judicial and administrative proceedings, a judge or an administrator having personal or proprietary interest in the outcome of a proceeding must not exercise adjudicatory powers in the case in question. Was Akpabio set up to take that route? A smart Akpabio would have let his deputy handle that case. If he did, justice would have been seen to have been done. Or, could it be that Akpabio and his Senate believed that only weaklings without money and power bother about procedural fairness? And there are lawyers among them.

I do not know how they do it where Akpabio comes from but in my part of the country, no wise man is allowed to directly judge his own case. A man would be an original àgbà òsìkà to make himself judge over his enemies. Section 36 of our constitution is clear on right to fair hearing. And it is universal in its application. The US Supreme Court also carefully laid this out: “A fair trial in a fair tribunal is a basic requirement of due process. Fairness, of course, requires an absence of actual bias in the trial of cases… To this end, no man can be a judge in his own case and no man is permitted to try cases where he has an interest in the outcome.” In another case, the court held that “prejudice, in order to be disqualifying, must consist of a personal animosity toward one party or very strong feeling in favour of the other party.” In this case of Natasha, Chief Akpabio was actually the other party – the accused; and he was the judge.

The senate riotously mobbed the accuser out of the chamber. She will be in the cold for six months. This is not about who is saying the truth and who is lying. No one outside the two actors can say what the ‘true’ truth is. What is true is known to the supposedly harassed and the alleged harasser. But I think Akpabio, for whatever reasons, should not have bungled his case. He shouldn’t have sat over the matter with the catty visage of the lion, king of the jungle. What he did is what the English qualify with the word ‘impunity’. And I think he did so because in this country, anyone blessed with his kind of uncommon bigness is hefty enough to pocket the law.

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At the weekend again, Akpabio went regional in search of defence. He thought his tribulations should wear the tunic of politics. He vowed that the South South region (where he comes from) would not surrender the senate presidency no matter the level of gang up against him. He said: “The Senate President of today is not representing himself alone. He is representing a people who are very crucial to the economic life wire of this country. So, when people gang up and conspire, I hear voices from Adamawa shouting, I hear voices from Kwara State shouting, I hear some young people from the southwest being used for something they don’t know, they don’t know the rules of the Senate, you can’t be a herbalist and start quoting the Bible, you won’t know what to quote.” Interesting. So, Akpabio’s enemies are from the South West, the North Central and the North East? Who are they? And he said the young people (aka herbalists) from the south west are very ignorant? Who are they? Those who want to be lame should be completely lame, the blind should be blind totally; half blinded people always plunge the world into wars. If I were Akpabio, I would be bold and total in naming names. That is what real men do.

If you carry a pot of uncommon palm oil, run away from stone throwers. Has Akpabio ever heard the Yoruba story of
the small rat that says it will destroy the farmer’s work (Eku kékeré t’ó ní òun yóò ba isé àgbè jé)? The story, with a little adjustment, is reproduced here as told by James Bọ̀dé Agbájé in his ‘Proverbs: A Strategy for Resolving Conflict in Yorùbá Society’:

“There was once a small rat on a farm who said to the farmer that he would destroy all the farmer’s work. The farmer answered the rat: ‘How can you destroy my work, you tiny idiot?’ When the maize on the farm matured, the rat went to see the farmer and told him again that he would destroy all the farmer’s work. The farmer just burst out laughing and told the rat: ‘You are joking. How will you destroy this huge maize farm?’ The rat said okay and departed. When the farmer was harvesting his maize, the rat revisited the farm and again promised the farmer that one day all his harvest would be destroyed. The farmer just ignored the rat and the rat went away. After the farmer had finished packing all his harvested crops in the aka (‘barn’), the rat managed to enter the barn unnoticed. He started eating part of the maize and left the wasted remnants covering the ground.

“The farmer knew what was happening and announced, ‘I know you are in there. You just hide yourself there.’ He was determined to deal ruthlessly with the small wicked rat. The rat heard the farmer and answered him. He told him that he had promised the farmer that his farm would be destroyed and the time had now come for the operation. The angry farmer thought he should just smoke out the stupid tiny rat. A little fire he made went out of hand. Within the twinkling of an eye, all the maize caught fire. Just then, the rat escaped and the whole place was burnt to ashes. Later, the rat went to the farmer and said to him that the deed was done. The rat boasted: ‘I promised to shatter your efforts and you underrated what I said. Haven’t I destroyed all the fruits of your labour now?’ The farmer was downcast and started to bite his fingers in regret. He said that if he had taken the proper precautions and had not underrated the stupid tiny rat, the whole situation could have been averted.” The powerful should be very careful; the ground is wet and slippery.