How should Ibrahim Mantu, the late former Deputy Senate President, be remembered? As the man credited by Orji Uzor Kalu, former Governor of Abia State, as the man deserving of the single biggest credit for the truncation of former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s infamous third term bid? As the man who so boldy confessed on national TV to have helped his party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), rig elections in the past? Or as the man who so rightly warned against the dangers of religion taken to the extreme?

Before the announcement of his death on Tuesday, Mantu’s last public appearance was at a reception organised by the law firm of Chukwuma-Machukwu Ume (SAN) in honour of some new lawyers who were called to the Nigerian Bar on July 30.

Delivering his speech, he advised the new lawyers to ignore religious and ethnic sentiments in their practice, identifying religion, ethnic biases and bad leadership among the three major factors keeping Nigeria backwards. He had also warned that those going about killing Christians and burning down churches across the country in the name of Islam were pursuing an agenda that was quite different from the teachings of Islam.

“To the new wigs, you are now going to face the world,” he said.

“As you do that, please don’t allow yourself to practice what has kept this nation where it is today. I don’t think any of us seated here is happy with the state of affairs in this country today. Nobody is happy, but God loves Nigeria in such a unique way.

“Religion is generally about peace and love. I am a Muslim but those who are killing in the name of Islam are not true Muslims. This is because, in the Koran, we are instructed, we are directed by our own Prophet Muhammed that we should protect Christians whenever they are in trouble.”

On ethnicity, Mantu, who was the chairman of the event, noted that ethnicity breeds nepotism at the expense of meritocracy.

He argued that premium should be placed on meritocracy if the country must move forward. Still on the point, the senator told the lawyers that everyone should remember that no one has powers over his or her own origination, and as such, no one should hold any bias towards anyone because of their ethnic background or skin colour.

“So as you go out, don’t allow those things that have made us captives to capture you: religion, ethnicity and regionalism,” he said while rounding off his speech.

Mantu, 74, himself “went out” in the early hours of Tuesday at the isolation ward of a private hospital in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).