Officers of the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) withheld the international passport of Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan for several minutes on Tuesday.
Over the weekend, Akpoti-Uduaghan marked her second anniversary in the Senate with the commissioning of various projects in Kogi Central.
The lawmaker went live on Instagram from the airport, confronting immigration officers over the alleged seizure of her passport.
In a video obtained on Tuesday, the senator accused Senate President Godswill Akpabio of ordering the confiscation.
She described the incident as an unlawful restriction of her movement and a violation of her fundamental rights.
“Hello, fellow Nigerians. I’m Senator Natasha. Having completed my second year in office, I decided to take a week off. I’m at the airport here, and my passport has been withheld again,” she said in the video.
“This same thing happened before when I was stopped from travelling even though I had committed no offence, and there was no court order restricting me. The last time this happened, the officer in charge told me that the Senate President, Senator Godswill Akpabio, instructed them to withhold my passport and prevent me from travelling because he claimed that each time I go abroad, I ‘spoil the image of the country’ by granting interviews to international media.”
According to the senator, it took the intervention of an influential individual before her passport was released the last time such an incident occurred.
“Godswill Akpabio has instructed the Controller General of Customs to withhold my passport. This is wrong,” she said.
Akpoti-Uduaghan further claimed that President Bola Tinubu had directed the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), Lateef Fagbemi, to withdraw all Federal Government cases filed against her in court.
