Senate President accuses Kogi senator of evading court service and using social media to distort facts.
Senate President Godswill Akpabio has refuted claims that he recently filed a new ₦200 billion defamation lawsuit against Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, insisting that the case was instituted several months ago.
In a statement on Saturday, Akpabio’s Special Assistant on Media, Jackson Udom, described as “false and misleading” Akpoti-Uduaghan’s claim that the suit was “just filed.”
“Her claim that the matter was ‘just filed’ is therefore false, misleading, and intended to distort public understanding of the case,” Udom said.
According to the statement, the lawsuit was instituted over three months ago, but its progress was slowed by routine administrative and judicial processes.
Udom explained that multiple attempts had been made by the court’s bailiff to serve Akpoti-Uduaghan personally with the originating court documents. Each attempt reportedly failed, he said, due to what the bailiff alleged under oath was the senator’s deliberate evasion of service.
“Only after these repeated evasions did the court, in November, grant the application for substituted service,” the statement added.
Akpabio maintained that the dispute should be addressed strictly through legal channels rather than through what he called “orchestrated narratives and staged outrage” on social media.
“The online applause Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan habitually seeks cannot replace credible evidence, legal procedure, or judicial scrutiny,” he said, adding that her behaviour mirrored her reaction to her earlier six-month suspension from the Senate — a sanction he described as lawful and which she ultimately served in full.
The Senate President urged Akpoti-Uduaghan to present her purported evidence of sexual harassment before the court, emphasising that the judicial process, not public sentiment would determine the truth.
“She is advised to properly instruct her lawyers, file her defence, and finally provide the evidence she purports to have for the baseless allegations she has peddled,” the statement read.
