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Ekiti Senator slap story is missing the “old woman” and “assault” part. For a reason

Some media houses reported a false story that the Senator representing Ekiti South, Biodun Olujimi, was slapped by a staff of the National Assembly, yet to others the most important part of the story was that she is PDP, had criticized the President and did not want an “ordinary” staff on the lawmakers’ elevator, a narrative she says is the opposite.

Olujimi was reported to have tried to prevent a staff of the National Assembly from using the elevator reserved for Senators and when the Staff refused, she ordered her aide to slap him. The report so conveniently skips if the aide did slap the staff and went on to say the staff slapped the Senator in response. Response to the instruction or response to a slap? Never stated.

Mrs. Olujimi on her part explained that while there is an elevator reserved for lawmakers and another for Staff, she tried to use the one for staff because she also encourages staff to use the one for lawmakers. According to her

“Some gentleman and women came in and were abusing asking why he (her aide) will shield anybody, get out this is our lift. One of them just pushed him and then they had altercation, I just came out and told them that it was wrong and that is what happened.”

She denied being slapped as reported across many News Media houses.

PulseTV, in its usual pop culture style journalism, reported it as “How Ekiti Senator ‘got slapped’ in NASS elevator”, inverted comma to the rescue. It also threw in some how she is anti-Buhari talking points. Apparently, the Senator has said President Buhari is not in charge of the Nation, in the past.

TheCable on its part structured theirs along party lines. “Protest as PDP Senator ‘orders aide to slap’ national assembly worker”. This report closes with a claim that the Senator spoke to “journalists” and said she will take the case to the Police.

But Vanguard reports the Senator, speaking to Journalists, as saying

“The boy came, and they brought him and I told him he should go because he knew that he didn’t do well. You didn’t do well because you were the one that slapped him. I didn’t even say a word all through because I stood at the back.”

Part 5, Chapter 25,  Section 252 of the Criminal Code states that

A person who strikes, touches, or moves, or otherwise applies force of any kind to, the person of another, either directly or indirectly, without his consent, or with his consent, if the consent is obtained by fraud, or who by any bodily act or gesture attempts or threatens to apply force of any kind to the person of another without his consent, in such circumstances that the person making the attempt or threat has actually or apparently a present ability to effect his purpose, is said to assault that other person, and the act is called an assault.

The preceding sections give the right to people who are employed to enforce orders to use a reasonable amount of force, which would put the Senator in the clear had it been a security officer attached to her forcefully stops someone from using a designated elevator, provided the force applied can be explained with the situation.

This would however not go viral as did the sensational story of a Senator receiving slaps for trying to oppress an innocent Nigerian.

In 2017, Senator Olujimi, who is now being tagged a “arrogant senator” by bloggers and media houses, sponsored a bill to stop secret recruitment which was to help curb the secret and privileged recruitment being done by some government agencies which saw privileged people getting jobs others do not even know there was vacancy for. She was Deputy Governor of Ekiti State and is presently the Deputy Minority Whip of the Senate, the only woman in the principal officers of the Senate. She is 60 this year.

The alleged slapping of a 60 years old woman is the new movie the Nigerian media entertains itself with.

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