- Safiu Kehinde
Former Minister of Education, Oby Ezekwesili, has confirmed telling Ebonyi lawmaker, Sen. Onyekachi Nwaebonyi, to shut up during the hearing of the sexual harassment petition filed before the Senate by suspended Kogi lawmaker, Sen. Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan.
NPO Reported the heated clash and exchange of words between Ezekwesili and Nwaebonyi before the Senate Committee on Ethics, Privileges, and Public Petitions.
The moment captured in a viral video shared on X on Tuesday showed a fierce Nwaebonyi lashing out at the ex-Minister who also refused to hold back in the verbal tussle and name calling.
The Senator representing Ebonyi North Senatorial District, slammed Ezekwesili, calling her an insult to womanhood.
Speaking in an interview on Channels TV’s Politics Today programme, Nwaebonyi disclosed he became upset when Ezekwesili told him to shut up while calling him hooligan.
“I was addressing the presiding officer, she talk to me and said, ‘Will you shut your mouth?’ A sitting senator in the senate that i should shut up my mouth, and I said ‘No Ma, withdraw that statement.’ She said, ‘Will you shut your mouth? You are a hooligan.’” Nwaebonyi had said.
Narrating her side of the story in an interview on Arise TV’s Prime Time programme, Ezekwesili, who was among Natasha’s representatives, confirmed telling the Senator to shut up.
She, however, claimed Nwaebonyi was already upset over their refusal to speak on account of the committee’s refusal to meet their objections.
“The Senator, who I will not acknowledge by mentioning his name at all, he then said “if they are not serious about giving any testimony, I am here representing the Senate President as a respondent and I am prepared to speak because we can’t continue with this”
“So I said to him, can you please shut up? Because we were just told we couldn’t speak and you have been speaking without any form of an equivalent treatment. But you said we couldn’t speak because we were not ready to go into any conversation without the objections being addressed. He was already provoked” Ezekwesili said.