In the wake of the emergency rule proclamation by President Olusegun Obasanjo, watchers of politics in Plateau State put part of the blame at the footsteps of Ibrahim Nasir Mantu, Deputy Senate President. He was accused of acquiescing to the presidential proclamation, thereby suggesting that his political career in the state may nose dive. However, it appears as though Mantu’s position may have actually been given a fillip by recent developments in the state. This report captures the political footwork of opinion leaders in the state.
Flowing from his perceived role in the endorsement of emergency rule in his native Plateau State and the successful launch of his authorised biography, Ibrahim Mantu: Lesson in Tolerance, observers may well have equally endorsed Senator Ibrahim Mantu, as the preeminent political godfather of the Plateau.
Three weeks ago, it was a delegation of power brokers from the state including retired generals among whom was Gen. Jerry Useni, formerly this, that and unofficial number two to Gen. Sani Abacha, that came fanning around the deputy Senate President in praise of his role in the proclamation of emergency rule in their State.
The following week it was the full complement of the suspended House of Assembly led by their suspended Speaker, Mr. Simon Lanlong that came to pay homage.
The lawmakers who had taken legal action against the proclamation and had vilified Senator Mantu as the architect of their collective deprivation were indeed apologetic, affirming that their suspension from office had helped to return peace to troubled areas of the State.
”These are the 24 members of the Plateau State House of Assembly currently on suspension (and) we are here to inform you that within the period of emergency rule peace is being restored,” Mr. Lanlong said during the surprise call on July 7.
For a state abounding with retired generals who have dovetailed into the political arena, it is a telling testimony to Senator Mantu’s political sagacity that he has unwittingly, or as some others think, cunningly come to his preeminent status in the political horizon.
Just a year ago it was quite different as the political trajectory of the deputy Senate President were rolling on towards the dubious side of history.
Arising from the April 12 National Assembly elections was the remarkable controversy that shadowed the elections of Senator Mantu and all other PDP principal officers of the Senate. The tale which still finds resonance among several opposition party elements is that Mantu and his cohorts in the Senate leadership lost their elections and were only returned through the manipulation of the system.
Senator Mantu’s camp was further upset by revelations of the N54 million bribery allegation raised against him and Senator Jonathan Zwingina by FCT minister, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai shortly after the screening process for ministers at the beginning of the present National Assembly.
The minister’s inability to substantiate the allegation and Mantu’s popularity among Senators helped to sustain him and a Senate enquiry into the issue cleared him.
The flood of solidarity visits from political stakeholders from his Plateau State at the height of the allegation went a long way to demonstrate to observers his supposed command of his constituency.
Among those that stood behind him during that period of travail was the Plateau State House of Assembly, whose Speaker, Mr. Lalong led majority of the House on a solidarity visit to the Senate number two man on October 17, 2003.
Defending him against the bribery allegation, Mr. Lalong had said:
“He is a leader with very high esteem, he is a leader we have known with integrity and he is a leader we know cannot do such a thing.”
Affirming the commitment of the resolve of the citizenry in Plateau State, the Speaker had told Senator Mantu that the State legislature had :
“Passed a motion on the floor of the House condemning the allegation and saying that the whole of Plateau is solidly behind you.”
Following that allegation and with Mantu’s stock high in the state, it was thus improbable that he would tamper with the political structure that had returned him and Governor Joshua Dariye to power for a second tenure.
The relationship between Governor Joshua Dariye and Senator Mantu according to associates had in the first tenure oscillated between love and acrimony, but as the 2003 elections approached, both men it was alleged, entered into a symbiotic relationship aimed at mutual survival.
With Dariye generally being alleged to have performed below satisfaction, it was alleged that the combination of retired generals who had taken camp in the ANPP and the dissenters within his own PDP would one way or the other, sabotage his re-election.
While some within the PDP like Damishi Sango decamped and the State’s nominal political godfather, Baba Solomon Lar gave the Governor a grudging bidding, Senator Mantu was an exception, giving the Governor a robust support within and outside the party.
On his part, the Governor with his control of the state party machine was supposed to pave way for Senator Mantu who following the then smouldering religious crisis in the State was nearly all but ruled out from obtaining the party’’s reelection ticket on account of his religious inclination.
A Muslim representing a constituency having nearly 95% of its population inclined to Christianity, it was generally assumed that Senator Mantu could never return to the Senate. Whichever way, he got his party ticket and got back to the Senate and fought off a bitter campaign from Senator Isa Mohammed to retain his position as deputy Senate President.
However, following their respective second inaugurations in Abuja and Jos, the Dariye-Mantu party soon faded.
There are allegations that Governor Dariye refused candidates of Senator Mantu for commissioners in the State supposedly monopolising the dividends arising from a joint, if not, Mantu inspired gubernatorial come back.
There are other suggestions that the Governor gave the deputy Senate President only one post in his cabinet.
Whatever it was, the relationship between both men soured, a development that was compounded by the festering religious crisis.
Senator Mantu, Vanguard gathered, was peeved by the seeming incapacity or unwillingness of the Governor to resolve the dispute.
Interestingly, in the run up to the 2003 elections, Governor Dariye had been loathed by some section of the Christian and “indigenous” community in the State for supposedly siding with the Hausa-Fulani oligarchy in the State to undermine the “natives”.
Whether trying to win back the heart of the dominant Christian population or it was just unwillingness to govern as the headmaster, President Olusegun Obasanjo imputed, Dariye is alleged to have stoked the crisis by his actions and inactions.
As tempers festered in the State, communication between the Governor and his former friend became distant.
On his return from his last controversial foreign visit as a Governor last May, Senator Mantu was said to have by chance gotten to know the Dariye was in town in Abuja.
An account of events of the weekend before the proclamation of emergency rule on May 18 had it that when Mantu got to know that the Governor had returned after the trip supposedly undertaken to treat a persistent leg injury in the United States, he was reported to have called at the Governor’s Guest House in Abuja but met the Governor absent. The deputy Senate President, it was said, left a message that the Governor should see him as soon as possible.
That urgency in the request was said to have been informed by the President’s observations during his visit to affected crisis areas of the State and the refugee locations earlier that week. In the absence of the Governor, Mantu was the only other senior official from the State in the President’’s trip.
It is quite likely that Senator Mantu may have gotten wind of the President’’s intention on emergency rule either during that visit or during the security meetings by senior officials of State called by the President to discuss the issue after the visit.
In any case, the Governor throughout that weekend reportedly did not make contact with Mantu, a decision that apparently made him (Mantu) to summon all 24 members of the State House of Assembly to brief them on the President’s intentions.
The Governor who left Abuja after the sports festival supposedly on the promptings of the President to his Jos base that Sunday, reportedly ran back to Abuja the following day on the prompting of the State legislators who briefed of the imposing hurricane.
Desperate efforts by the Governor to stop the President from proclaiming emergency rule throughout the day and night of May 17 failed, leading to his suspension in the first instance for six months on May 18.
Some opinion leaders like the State legislators said Mantu’s determination to enforce emergency rule helped to sustain Obasanjo’s resolve. Others, however, say that the Governor even after the allegations of political incapacity to stop the crisis in his State also showed sheer political naivety to mount a lobby to stop the National Assembly from endorsing the proclamation.
Very reliable sources told Vanguard of desperate efforts made by Senator Timothy Adudu (ANPP Plateau), to mobilise the Senate to scuttle the proclamation.
Despite being a harsh critic of Dariye’s style of governance and coming from the opposing ANPP, Adudu it was gathered, mobilied Senators on at least two occasions to meet with Dariye for him to make a defence of the allegations raised against him. On the two occasions, the Governor failed to turn up and Senators left unconvinced of his political capacity to deal with the Plateau crisis, a source privy to the arrangement disclosed.
With the National Assembly overwhelmingly endorsing the proclamation, alas on the prompting of Mantu who reportedly wept on account of the crisis during the closed door session, the lot of the Governor and the State legislature plummeted in the State.
It was thus not surprising that the suspended Speaker would accuse Mantu of betrayal and having a hidden agenda on the issue. The hidden agenda, some allege, is that Mantu would now through emergency rule have his way in imposing his choice of commissioners in the State. However, with Gen. Chris Alli, the State administrator refusing to appoint commissioners, the basis of that insinuation has been uprooted.
Commissioners or not, Senator Mantu’s ascendancy in the Plateau became indisputable on June 24 barely a month after the declaration of emergency rule.
The launch of his authorised biography attended by President Obasanjo who reportedly took the unusual step of delaying a foreign trip to attend the occasion, showcased his political now enlarged capacity demonstrated through the physical presence of all elected council chairmen from Plateau State.
The following week, it was the turn of Plateau elders to pay homage. They were followed the following week by the full complement of the suspended State House of Assembly who recanted their earlier insinuations against Mantu.
Undoubtedly with Dariye out, Mantu is not just the lord of his Jos manor, he has become lord of the Plateau. With such powers, real or imagined, now said to be in his possession, the temptation to sustain Dariye’s suspension could be highly tempting! Except, of course, the latter pays obeisance.
