BREAKING: Senate Unseals Senator Natasha’s Office, Clears Path For Resumption

BREAKING: Senate Unseals Senator Natasha’s Office, Clears Path For Resumption

By Nafisat Abdulrahman

The National Assembly has unsealed the bureau of Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan (PDP, Kogi Central), signaling a imaginable extremity to her months-long standoff with Senate President Godswill Akpabio.

The Sergeant-at-Arms of the National Assembly, backed by combined information personnel, connected Tuesday reopened Akpoti-Uduaghan’s Office 205 successful the Senate wing.

The determination restores her entree to some the National Assembly premises and her office, paving the mode for her imaginable instrumentality to plenary erstwhile lawmakers resume connected October 7, 2025.

Sources said the determination was taken astatine a Senate enactment gathering connected Monday. “A question volition beryllium moved and, barring immoderate changes, the Minority Leader of the Senate, Senator Abba Moro, PDP, Benue South, volition determination the question for her to apologise, past seconded, and it volition beryllium taken,” the root said.

Akpoti-Uduaghan, who erstwhile chaired the Senate Committee connected Diaspora and NGOs, was suspended for six months successful March aft protesting the reassignment of her spot by Akpabio connected February 20. The Senate accused her of contravening its Standing Orders.

The suspension, which lapsed successful September, was challenged successful court. In July, Justice Binta Nyako of the Federal High Court, Abuja, ruled that the punishment was “excessive and unconstitutional,” ordering her recall. The justice noted that lengthy suspensions near constituents without representation.

However, the Senate enactment insisted she indispensable service her afloat suspension. When she attempted to return, she was denied access.

Akpoti-Uduaghan’s lawyer, Michael Jonathan Numa (SAN), pressed the substance further successful a September 11 missive to the Clerk to the National Assembly (CNA), Kamorudeen Ogunlana.

He warned that nonaccomplishment to callback her by September 15 would unit ineligible action, including “committal for contempt, disciplinary enactment for breach of the Code of Conduct for Public Officers, liability for instigating a breach of the bid with imaginable implications for nationalist security, and immoderate different remedies disposable to our lawsuit nether the law.”

Responding, Ogunlana maintained helium lacked the authorization to enactment without Senate resolution. “My bureau serves strictly arsenic an administrative arm, providing enactment to the Senate successful accordance with their resolutions, Standing Orders and the provisions of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended),” helium explained.

In a connection by his Director of Information, Bullah Audu Bi-Allah, Ogunlana stressed, “It indispensable beryllium emphasised that the determination of whether Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan tin resume her legislative duties arsenic of close without immoderate further oregon caller solution of the Senate pursuing the expiration of her six months suspension lies solely with the Senate and not with the bureau of the CNA.”

With her bureau reopened up of resumption, each eyes were present connected the Senate’s plenary league successful October to spot whether the question for her instrumentality volition beryllium taken and whether Akpoti-Uduaghan volition beryllium required to tender an apology earlier reclaiming her spot successful the chamber.