Mantu: Silent exit for a man of controversies

The Plateau-born politician, Senator Ibrahim Nasir Mantu, who died at 74 in the early hours of Tuesday, at an Abuja hospital, rose to the zenith of the Nigerian political scene; played prominent roles that made it into the country’s political history, and faded into oblivion, before his eventual death.

Depending on who one listens to, Mantu is described by friends and critics as urbane, cosmopolitan, guileful and rapacious.

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He was nearly the most flamboyant and most influential Deputy President the Nigerian Senate has ever had. The Plateau Central senator served as the Deputy President of the Senate between 2000 and 2007, when he failed to secure a fresh mandate to the upper chamber of the National Assembly.

By the time he consolidated his grip of the number two seat in the Senate, two years into Nigeria’s fresh democratic sojourn, and buoyed by his closeness with then-president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, Mantu became perhaps the most powerful person in the National Assembly. He served as the clearinghouse for nearly everything in the legislative arm.

In one such role, Mantu was accused by then ministerial nominee, Nasir El-Rufai, of demanding N50 million to smoothen the process of his confirmation. But both Mantu and the other person mentioned in the scandal, Senate Leader Jonathan Zwingina denied the allegation.

Mantu’s savviness was a little wonder considering that he brought with him into the new republic political sagacity and ample network amassed from a decade of sturdy political participation. He had been a major player in the previous attempt to switch to democratic rule, giving him mastery of the routes around Nigeria’s murky politics.

In the botched Babangida transition programme, in the early 1990s, Mantu aspired to, but lost the bid to chair the National Republican Convention (NRC), one of the two political parties formed by the military government into which all politicians coalesced. He would later steer the unsuccessful presidential campaign for Alhaji Bashir Othman Tofa, the NRC’s candidate for the annulled 1993 election.

Mantu’s most controversial action, however, was his role in the aborted third term agenda believed to be driven by him at the instance of President Obasanjo. As the chair of the Senate’s Constitution Amendment Committee, Mantu left no one in doubt about the mission for the exercise, despite the denials mouthed by him and the Villa. It took a stiff fight to smash the agenda on the Red Chamber’s floor.

Since his defeat by a little known, Sati Gogwim of the Action Congress (AC) in 2007 – itself a statement by his constituents through the ballot box, Mantu was not able to bounce back to reckoning till the end.

Born-again election rigger

In April 2018, Mantu emerged out of oblivion to spark another controversy, this time he did the unusual – confessing his ‘sins’ as a long-term election fixer. In a Channels TV interview, the former deputy Senate president owned up to participating in rigging elections, saying he had abandoned the old way as he advocated for Nigeria to turn the leaf.

“Yes, yes, I did. But I am now confessing the truth. What do I mean? I didn’t have to go and change the election but you provide money. You give money to INEC boys to help; that is, they see any chance they should try and favour you. You provide money for the security. In all our elections in the past, I’ve been in the game for about 20 years.

“And I tell you each time it is not necessarily when I am contesting an election but when my party sponsors a candidate I would like that candidate to win the election. What we used to do before, we make provision for INEC, we make provision for security, we make provision for even agents of other parties so that they would not raise any objection to what we are able to get. Whether I rig myself or not, but when I provide those resources to the officials, I am rigging election.”

With his death, Mantu left the public scene ironically quietly following an ebb in his controversial political career.