In a republic where wolves dress in velvet and vultures dine by chandelier light, Senator Natasha Akpoti Uduaghan’s satirical “apology” arrives like the sudden cry of a crow before a storm. Her letter is no mere note; it is the sound of a dying institution scratching at its own coffin lid. With surgical venom, she exposes a legislature that no longer legislates, but preys—where dignity is considered an act of rebellion and refusal to bow is treated as sacrilege. As the old African proverb murmurs, “When the drumbeat changes, the dancer must adjust; but when the drummer is mad, no rhythm saves the dancer.” In Nigeria’s Senate, the madness has long seized the drummer.
Senator Natasha’s quill drips not with ink but with something colder, heavier — a requiem for a Senate that now resembles a mortuary with microphones. In her grim confession, she unveils a theatre where laws are less debated than bartered, and competence is drowned beneath oceans of oily entitlement. “Forgive me,” she writes with exquisite derision, “for choosing elections over erections,” shattering in one apocalyptic sentence the illusions of moral governance. Beneath the embroidered agbadas lies a market of submission where integrity is a currency too costly to spend.
Every word in Natasha’s letter slithers like a serpent in the reader’s mind, coiling around the suffocating truth: that the chamber designed for the people’s mandate has instead become a coliseum for bruised male egos — egos so vast they could eclipse the sun. And here, as an old Igbo saying whispers, “When the toad falls on its back, it does not lament its deformity but the shame of being seen.” Thus exposed, the Senate’s dignity lies twitching under the harsh light of her prose.
More terrifying still is the Senate’s quiet complicity — the hallowed silence that greets each whispered proposition, each unspoken demand. It is not the howl of wolves that spells doom for a village, but the silence of the watchdogs. Nigeria’s dream of democracy does not die with the loud clash of swords but with the soft slither of unseen knives — as Natasha’s letter so mercilessly illustrates. In that cold theatre, refusal to bow is not merely punished; it is anathematized.
Senator Natasha’s “apology” must not be mistaken for defiance alone; it is a dirge sung for a polity that has traded governance for grotesque theatrics. “When termites infest the rafters,” says an old African warning, “it is the roof that collapses, but the house that mourns.” Nigeria stands now beneath a Senate whose timber has long since rotted, where only the painted gloss of ceremony hides the encroaching decay. Her letter peels back the facade, revealing the Senate’s soul — worm-eaten, weary, and wicked.
In the end, Natasha’s letter is not a cry for pity; it is the sound of a blade sharpening in the night. It reminds us that dignity, once a birthright, has become a dangerous contraband smuggled into the halls of power. Until the foundation of this decrepit institution is torn up and the predators unmasked, Nigeria’s democracy will remain a mausoleum — echoing with false promises, perfumed with rot, and governed by the walking erections sorry elected leaders.
– Inah Boniface Ocholi writes from Ayah – Igalamela/Odolu LGA, Kogi state.
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