Woman politician who had an altercation with Senator Remi Tinubu, during a constitution review session in Lagos, Arinola Oloko, has said that the Senator asked security people to take her away from the scene.
Besides, she insisted Tinubu called her a thug based on her insistence that the organisers should allow her and others enter the venue.
According to Oloko, she was determined to be part of the event because of the importance she attached to it.
In an interview in ‘Saturday Punch’, she said: “Senator Oluremi Tinubu is my senator and I respect her as my senator. I have tremendous respect for authority. We were at the venue, standing in a queue, only for us to get to a point and they said registration had closed. They did not say from the beginning that they had a certain number that they were restricting the hearing to. If so, they should have made us register online, so that we would have known that on getting to the centre we wouldn’t bother trying to enter. Also, we saw (other) people coming in; senators were coming in, governors, local government chairmen, government officials and a few other people who came to present papers (were coming in) but it didn’t look like a proper representation of the people.
“Everybody says the constitution is faulty. They (government)said we cannot get a new constitution; but we can get a review. Now, to present our contributions, we can’t. I was expecting a proper hearing for the Senate constitutional review. I was genuinely interested in the hearing. I was talking with those at the entrance, asking them to be fair and allow us to enter. I don’t know what happened but the Senator came out and started saying, ‘Call that woman! Come here!’
“By default, I responded and went to her (Mrs Tinubu). I told her my name and told her I am in her constituency and that she is my senator and that we had been in the queue like forever.
“I tried to recount everything that had transpired to her. In my mind, I thought she would say, ‘Oh, this is wrong and all of that.’ But she said, ‘Shut up! Shut up! Call the security to take this thug away.’ At that point, I told her, ‘Ma, I am not a thug; I don’t look like a thug. I am not being violent and I don’t look a criminal. That’s the qualification of a thug. That was all that happened.”
