(Updated) Breaking: Ibrahim Mantu is Dead
By Chuks Okocha
Former Deputy Senate President, Senator Ibrahim Mantu, is dead. He died early today (Tuesday) in Abuja. He was aged 74.
Senator Mantu, who was Deputy President of the Nigeria Senate from 2001- 2007, died at about 2am on Tuesday, after nine days of sickness, according to family sources.
Sources said he may have died of COVID-19.
The former legislator, who took ill nine days ago, THISDAY gathered, had been receiving treatment at home before he was rushed to the hospital when there was no improvement.
He died at the Diff Hospital in Abuja where he was placed in isolation, the source disclosed.
The late former deputy Senate President will be buried at 2pm today.
Mantu, who hailed from Gindiri, in Mangu Local Government Area of Plateau State, was an influential political figure in Nigeria for several years.
Born on February 16, 1947, the late politician began his political career with the defunct National Party of Nigeria (NPN).
During the aborted Third Republic, he vied for the Chairmanship of the National Republican Convention (NRC), one of the two registered political parties. During the Late General Sani Abacha transition programme, Mantu was a chieftain of the United Nigeria Congress Party (UNCP).
In the build up to the present democratic dispensation, Mantu joined the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), on which platform he won election to represent Plateau Central Senatorial District in the National Assembly in 1999. He served as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Information before emerging as the Deputy Senate President in 2001.
