BY LINUS CHIBUIKE
FORMER Deputy Senate President, Ibrahim Mantu, is dead.
Mantu reportedly died at the age of 72, on Monday night.
He was said to have died at an Abuja hospital after a brief illness.
It was learnt that the former deputy Senate president had been in and out of an undisclosed ailment for some time.
Close associates said he fell ill again when he got to Jos last weekend and was rushed to the hospital. “He didn’t make it back home,” the source said.
Former Commissioner for Information in Plateau State, Yiljap Abraham, described Mantu as an open minded communal and national politician who operated beyond religious and ethnic bounds.
“Distinguished Senator Mantu carried himself in great dignity all through his lifetime. He was open to all and in his early upbringing in Gindiri, he played the role that touched and connected people,” he said.
“He thought of the general good. He was a politician with charismatic difference. Surely, we will miss him,” Yiljap, Mantu’s close associates, said.
Mantu was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Peoples Democratic Party.
He had been actively involved in politics, served in many capacities and also held many political positions, including the Director-General of the Defunct National Republican Convention, Presidential campaign 1993; National Chairman, defunct Peoples Democratic Alliance, and National Publicity Secretary defunct United Nigeria Congress Party.
In 1999, he was elected Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (Plateau Central Constituency ) under the platform of the PDP and was appointed Deputy Senate President in 2000.
