Nigeria’s Fourth Republic will be 27 years old later this month. In that span, its dramatis personae have risen and fallen, defected and been defeated, retired with dignity or slunk away in disgrace. The Third Term Agenda of 2006 has become a cautionary relic. Presidents have come and gone; governors have mounted the stage and exited; parties have fractured, fused and rebranded. Yet one man remains: Nicholas Mutu Ebomo.
Since 1999, he has represented Bomadi/Patani Federal Constituency in the House of Representatives. Seven elections, seven victories, 27 years in the Green Chamber.
He is widely regarded as the longest-serving member of the National Assembly. That fact alone makes him a historical artefact.
The question is whether he is a monument to democratic endurance or to democratic stagnation.
As the Yoruba say, “Àgbà kì í wà l’ojà kí orí omo tuntun wo” – when elders are present in the market, the head of a newborn should not be crooked. But what happens when the elder never leaves the market at all?
Longevity in politics can be a blessing or a curse. It can signify stability, institutional memory and the steady hand of experience. Yet it can also signify sclerosis – the calcification of democratic arteries and the suffocation of renewal.
Mutu’s career embodies this paradox. Like the boroughmongers of pre-Reform Act Britain, whose hold on “rotten boroughs” made representation a private estate rather than a public trust, his long tenancy raises an uncomfortable question: when does democratic continuity become feudal possession?
Born in 1960, Mutu cut his political teeth as chairman of Bomadi Local Government Council in the twilight of military rule.
In 1999, under the banner of the Peoples Democratic Party, he won election to represent Bomadi/Patani. He has been returned at every electoral cycle since. In 2025, he defected to the All Progressives Congress, citing internal divisions within the PDP, though many read the move as part of the wider migration that followed Governor Sheriff Oborevwori’s defection to the ruling party.
From 2009 to 2019, he chaired the House Committee on the Niger Delta Development Commission. Since 2023, he has chaired the House Committee on Gas Resources. His résumé is long; his record, critics insist, is thin.
What makes his current ambition troubling is not simply its longevity but its brazenness. As the APC’s House of Representatives primaries open, Mutu is seeking the party’s ticket to extend his tenure to an eighth term. Whether he wins or loses is almost beside the point.
The very act of seeking another term after 27 years is a defiance of democratic renewal. A single tree does not make a forest; yet Mutu has made Bomadi/Patani appear as though one man alone defines its destiny.
The charge of legislative barrenness is not new. APC chieftain, Dr Eyiseifa Ebiowe, once alleged that Mutu’s Hansard record shows no bills and no recorded contributions in 27 years.
“He hardly ever makes contributions of any kind at plenary or even committee sessions, and generally just occupies space,” he thundered.
Supporters counter that Mutu has influenced NDDC projects for Bomadi and Patani – roads, water schemes, scholarships and medical outreaches. Some constituents in Patani credit him with computers in schools and modest infrastructure.
Yet he has also faced prosecution before the Federal High Court in Abuja on charges of money laundering and gratification involving N320m, allegedly linked to NDDC contracts. He pleaded not guilty. Whether conviction follows, or has followed, is a matter for the court and the public record; but perception matters – and the perception is politically damaging.
Political theory offers a useful lens. Edmund Burke argued that a representative owes his constituents not only his industry but also his judgment. Mutu’s tenure tests that doctrine. If representation is measured by longevity, he is exemplary. If it is measured by legislative output, the record appears anaemic. If it is measured by the creation of political space for others, the record is worse than thin; it is exclusionary. This is entrenched incumbency: the conversion of the advantages of office into near-permanent tenure. It is not illegal. It is electorally validated. But it violates the republican principle of rotation and renewal.
It is axiomatic that, no matter how long the night, dawn must break. For Patani, dawn means representation after decades of exclusion.
Continuity is a virtue in governance. Institutions require memory. Parliaments, like old oak-panelled chambers at Westminster, are strengthened by experience. But continuity becomes stagnation when it blocks the entry of new ideas, new voices and new actors.
Bomadi/Patani is composed of two local government areas. In Delta State, other federal constituencies have rotated House seats among their local government areas.
Bomadi/Patani has not. Patani leaders have repeatedly called for rotation, arguing that 27 years for one local government area is politically immoral.
Mutu’s repeated victories suggest legitimacy; the absence of rotation suggests closure. The electorate may vote for him, but the structure of competition has narrowed to the point where meaningful choice is curtailed.
The cost is intergenerational. A young person born in Patani in 1999 has never voted for, or seen elected, a different representative.
Their political imagination of the National Assembly is shaped by one name. That is not democracy as deliberation; it is democracy as habit. And habit, as the Yoruba warn, “Tí a bá ń rìn, ká rìn; tí a bá ń dúró, ká dúró” – when it is time to walk, walk; when it is time to stop, stop. For Mutu, the time to stop has come.
Political survival has diminishing returns. The first terms of a legislator are marked by learning. By the fourth and fifth, the expectation is leadership. By the seventh, the expectation is statesmanship. But Mutu does not aspire to the Senate.
He has never indicated serious interest in the governorship, nor has he attempted a presidential run. He appears content to remain a representative indefinitely.
His 10-year tenure as chairman of the NDDC Committee coincided with what many described as a season lost to the locusts.
Committee members accused him of cornering projects for his constituency. The EFCC case alleged abuse of that position for private gain. Whether or not the court convicts him, the perception feeds the narrative that longevity in Nigeria’s legislature correlates less with lawmaking than with access to contracts. That perception erodes trust in the institution and depresses civic participation.
Every democracy produces its sit-tight figures. In the United States, Strom Thurmond served 48 years in the Senate and shaped, controversially, debates on civil rights and defence policy.
In Ghana, J. H. Mensah remained a formidable mind in public life, helping to shape economic reform across non-consecutive years of service.
In Britain, before the Great Reform Act of 1832, entrenched patrons treated parliamentary seats as inheritances, not mandates.
The darker modern equivalent is found in post-Soviet states, where “eternal deputies” occupy seats for decades without sponsoring significant legislation, surviving instead through patronage. To critics, Mutu fits closer to this latter model. His longevity is matched not by legacy, but by survival.
Frantz Fanon wrote that each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfil it, or betray it. The generation that came of age in 1999 had a mission: to build institutions that would outlive military rule.
By clinging perpetually to power, Mutu’s generation has betrayed that mission in one constituency. The youth agenda I wrote about last week is not a slogan. It is a demand for integration.
When one man occupies a seat for 27 years and still seeks more, that agenda is deferred. Democracy does not die only through coups.
It dies through the slow suffocation of competition. Mutu’s career proves that elections alone do not guarantee renewal; they may merely ensure that the same name keeps appearing on the ballot.
Three things must happen if Bomadi/Patani is to escape this trap. First, the PDP and APC, the dominant parties in Delta State, must enforce zoning between Bomadi and Patani.
Second, civil society and traditional institutions must raise the cost of sit-tightism through open letters, public debates and voter education.
Third, the successor generation must organise beyond hashtags. Senegal’s election of Bassirou Diomaye Faye at 44 shows that when young people organise, they can win.
Nigeria’s youth must move from protest to candidacy, from Twitter to ward congresses, from outrage to organisation.
As the Yoruba say, “Bí ọmọde bá ṣubú, á wo iwájú; bí àgbàlagbà bá ṣubú, á wo ẹ̀yìn” – when a child falls, he looks forward; when an elder falls, he looks back. The youth must look forward.
This is not a political death sentence for Mutu. He still has a choice. He can seek the Senate, pursue a ministerial, ambassadorial or board appointment; and, if he feels unsuited to those higher offices, he can retire into business, philanthropy or statesmanship.
None of those paths is dishonourable. What is dishonourable is to remain in one seat until death, denying others the chance to serve. His career is a paradox carved into Nigeria’s democratic history.
He embodies both resilience and erosion. He has mastered survival. He has not mastered service.
To dissect Mutu is to confront an uncomfortable truth: democracy can be weakened not only by soldiers with guns, but also by politicians with ballots who refuse to leave the stage. That is one of democracy’s abiding limitations.
No system is perfect. But if democracy is to mean anything beyond ritual voting, it must contain within itself the grace of exit, the discipline of succession and the courage of renewal.
All third-, fourth-, sixth- and seventh-term office seekers should take note.
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