Orji Uzor Kalu, former governor of Abia State has alleged that former President of Nigeria, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo gave N50m to each Senator in 2007 for them to support his third term agenda.
He added, however, that unknown to many, Senator Ibrahim Mantu, the then deputy senate president was the person that worked tirelessly to scuttle the third term agenda.
The former Governor noted that the role played by Mantu in ensuring the third term agenda failed has made him an ‘eternal enemy’ of Chief Obasanjo.
Kalu made the revelations in his autobiography entitled, ‘My Life’ where he said Obasanjo withdrew the money he shared to the Senators directly from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
Bibian Anekwe News recalls then President Obasanjo towards the end of his second term in office as Nigeria’s democratically elected leader, pushed for an amendment of the 1999 constitution which would have seen him remain in office for another four years.
The move however did not see the light of the day as it was rejected by the lawmakers.
The chairman of the senate constitution review committee that worked on the proposed amendment was Ibrahim Mantu.
Kalu in his book explained that this made many people see him (Mantu) as one of those pushing for Obasanjo’s tenure elongation, but as revealed in his book, Mantu actually worked against the third term agenda.
He said the former deputy senate president worked with him and others to scuttle Obasanjo’s third term ambition.
He wrote: “I have seen a lot of people claiming credit for the failure of Obasanjo’s third term bid. If there is any credit for it, it has to go to Senator Ibrahim Mantu. He is the true hero of the third term war. The hero of what we did should be Mantu and nobody else, because he was the one who brought the strategy of how we will do it, he was the one who told me not to tell Ken Nnamani, the senate president.
“He told me that the senate president was on both sides of the Atlantic. He said nothing we discussed should get to Nnamani because he was with them while he would appear to be with us. I insisted that we carried the senate president along, but Mantu assured me that Obasanjo will get everything we discussed with the Senate President within seconds.
“He also told me to be careful with Senator David Mark because he too will brief Obasanjo about anything that was said to his hearing pertaining to the third term project. That was how we left both senator Nnamani and Mark out of the loop in our plot to destroy the third term agenda. Mantu and I promised ourselves during the process and coordinated those we recruited to vote against the amendment.
“Obasanjo broke the central bank open and gave each senator N50 million to vote for the third term. Chukwumerije brought his own to Abia liaison office in Abuja to show me and I asked him to go and give it back to them, and I arranged fifty million naira of my own and gave to him, just to encourage him.
“And so everybody, even those fighting corruption, knew that this money came from the CBN. They did not say anything.
“We had plan A, plan B and plan C strategies to stop the third term. Unfortunately, some of the governors we were meeting with, I don’t want to mention names were only meeting with us to have something to take back to Obasanjo. They were neither here nor there.
“Mantu was the one who scuttled the third term, and in doing so, he incurred Obasanjo’s eternal hatred. So Nigerians should celebrate him.”
