The 73-year-old trained lawyer made this known in a letter addressed to the president on Friday.
In the epistle , Senator Ebute opined that the ex-president’s recent outburst was born out of frustration against the current administration, instigating killings, armed criminality and violent protests.
The former lawmaker added that his assertions were “absurd, farcical, emotional, self-serving and lamentable expression of his emptiness on affairs of Nigeria in blind fury”.
Senator Ebute, however, urged the president not to be deterred by Obasanjo and his veiled agents desperate to return Nigeria back to the old, gloaming days.
Read full letter below:
Sir, let me congratulate you on the constitution of your #Nextlevelcabinet, which process of confirmation of the Ministerial nominees is ongoing at the Red Chamber of the National Assembly (NASS).
I am overwhelmingly elated that you have shamed your antagonists and ardent critics by the quality of your nominees. They comprise competent and trusted technocrats, professionals and politicians who can assist you in propelling your laudable vision in the next four years, some of whom also served in your preceding cabinet, but have been retained ostensibly based on their tested and proven capacities of hard work.
May I seize this opportunity to condole with you, the Inspector General of Police, the NYSC, Channels Television and the families of a Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), Usman Umar; a serving corps member, a reporter attached to Channels Television, Mr. Precious Owolabi and all those allegedly killed by the violent protesters of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN) otherwise known as the Shiites. May their souls rest in perfect peace. Amen!
My sympathies also go to you for Nigerians who suffered various degrees of injuries and incurred losses during the incensed and violent protests by the extremists Shiites sect members. It would have been worse but for the professionalism of the Police and other security agencies who paid the supreme price for the rest of us to be alive. We are immensely grateful.
Mr. President, I have no doubt that our dear nation has been unnecessary troubled and deliberately plunged into needless and avoidable crises. It has now dawned on me clearly that the same forces against public sanity, order and discipline which your administration has brought to bear on the polity and governance of Nigeria are more incensed now than ever as manifest in these evil plots to destabilize your administration and enthrone monumental chaos in the country.
And it is evident these detractors and evil men, are either pulling the strings directly or using hired agents to do everything possible within their powers to upstage you, destabilize your Presidency and the country. This is against the wishes of the overwhelming population of our people who actually came out in their large number to enthrone this administration despite the campaign of calumny and blackmail to disconnect you from your teeming supporters and followers in and outside the country.
Quite unfortunately, the latest anger against your administration and the spate of instigated killings, armed criminality and violent protests by some groups, are spurred by those who are obviously abusing the democratic liberty to lawful assembly, freedom of expression and rule of law with these renewed unrests. Their antics are already known to the security agencies and many Nigerians like my humble self who have had a long standing participation in the polity and by providence as an elder statesman.
It is extremely suicidal for Mr. President to forget or even underrate the capacity of his adversaries for instigative crises since those you defeated at the 2019 general elections are still around. I remain one person among many Nigerians who is not convinced the enemies have given up on their satanic mission to destroy the country in connivance with foreign interests hell-bent on the destruction of Nigeria. Our recent experience in the hands of these paid protesters is a pointer to this well informed fact.
I was perplexed that recently, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, an elder statesman who openly opposed your reelection ambition for no logical reasons and indeed, worked for your defeat by backing your strongest rival in the presidential poll again, wrote another open epistle to you. It is however not surprising to many of us who have had to tolerate his excesses as statesmen in various capacities.
And while you have not faulted anyone of them in the exercise of his or her democratic rights to freedom of choice, but surprisingly and expectedly, Obasanjo enviously regurgitated the same old, stale, puerile and, whitewashed tales about your Presidency and impressive leadership of the country.
While I do not intend that this letter serve as a direct response to Chief Obasanjo’s letter, it may serve as a tacit reply to his absurd, farcical, unidealistic, emotional, self-serving and lamentable expression of his emptiness on affairs of Nigeria in blind fury. This is because an attempt by any of us to re-write the history of the country will remain a disservice to the younger generation for a long time to come.
The issues raised by Obasanjo in the latest letter to you, in my understanding, only belittles his status and confirms his egoistic subservience to personal agenda, instead of the collective progress and development of Nigeria which we all sacrificed our comfort and pleasure to pursue.
Your Excellency Sir, without a doubt in my mind and having gone through series of commentaries and replies to Obasanjo from Nigerians who love, cherish and hold Nigeria dear to their hearts; and those who believe in the unity and indivisibility of our country, the dominant voices dismissed the contents of Obasanjo’s letter as irritating hogwash.
Therefore, Mr. President and leader of our nation, it may interest you to know that Obasanjo has been isolated, ostracized and indeed, stands alone like someone marooned on an Island, because majority of Nigerians have expressed in words and actions their unwillingness to toe his inglorious line, polluted thoughts and destructive antics.
It smacks of childishness for the same Obasanjo, who glowingly commended your government for its winning streaks in the battle against Boko Haram Insurgency and the anti-corruption campaign, in his first open letter to you in 2018, would turn around to recant his words today on same issues. It was the same Security Chiefs and troops who performed the marvelous feats he previously praised glowingly.
This sudden U-turn is not ordinary, and it gives me the strong suspicion that Obasanjo must have aligned himself with the internal and external forces clandestinely plotting the destruction of Nigeria, whilst he embarks on his usual manner of intermittently gauging public mood by pontificating his fake sanctimoniousness.
Obasanjo truly needs the prayers of all Nigerians to regain himself because he has veered too far off the track of wisdom and reason. It is our hope that despite all the Almighty God will find a place to forgive him his sins and all the wrongs he has done to Nigeria.
Mr. President Sir , it is not controvertible that anyone who does or have not seen your efforts in these past four years in the impactful reforms being carried out in the military in order to give to Nigeria a loyal and patriotic Armed Forces that will its best to the nation is bewitched by Obasanjo’s haunting “disease” which I prefer to classify mildly as senility.
Obasanjo and his dozens of veiled agents want to return Nigeria back to Egypt and thus, saddened that the Armed Forces are apolitical, and no more the politicized Military like his leadership gangsters reduced our Armed Forces and Security Chiefs in the immediate past. Such Nigerians are like “coupists” and must be watched closely before they derail the progressive transformation agenda of your administration.
Mr. President Sir, your defeat of Boko Haram insurgency and its taming to a very weak ragtag group that can only carryout ambushes and attacks on obscure soft targets is legendary. It remains the best thing your administration has done for Nigeria, ditto for the extinction of other armed insurrectional sects.
Please do not be deterred and remain more undaunted in your determination and obsession with building and nurturing a responsible military under your leadership as Commander-In-Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces. And stop at nothing to ensure our military continue to receive adequate training and resources to imbue them with even greater capacities to address the renewed threats to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Nigeria.
It has enormous benefits to the nation and undoubtedly, one of the greatest things that has ever happened to restore the lost image of our country. Nigerians are now proud of a sanitized and corruption- free Armed Forces under your command and the likes of Obasanjo and his demented surrogates are free to yell on rooftops. But the rantings are inconsequential.
Mr. President, believe me or not, but Chief Obasanjo has vengefully and unapologetically spoken for the vested interests which are angling to destabilize the country. It is obvious because the masses revolted through the ballot and thwarted the success of his preferred candidate for the 2019 Presidency and the palpable, unjustified anger against your leadership.
And I feel it behooves on those of us on the side of millions of patriotic Nigerians to speak out because we still believe in a united nation under a Buhari Presidency. We are irrevocably committed to it and shall continue to nurture it for posterity.
Sir, may I further confide in you openly that you should not succumb to any attempt by the paid protesters whether of armed Shiites or any other group to blackmail your administration in order to have a leeway in their evil designs. This is the time for you to take decisive actions against traitors in any guise; remain firm and steadfast in all your undertakings for greater public good and in the best interest of the country.
The sustained killing of security agents, innocent Nigerians and destructions to public properties by members of the repulsive fanatical IMN sect must be brought to an end by your government by whatever means possible. I am happy you are also thinking along this direction with your warning in the aftermath of the latest incident that the Shiites are pushing you to the wall and they should not tempt you any further. The Nigerian people whom you swore to defend and protect are eagerly yearning for a decisive action that will bring these traitors and enemies of human freedom to book.
No Nigerian with the genuine interest of our country at heart will dispute the fact that IMN is a terrorists sect, which has mushroomed in Nigeria under the leadership of Sheik Ibraheem EL-Zakzaky without lawful registration for over 40 years, but operates illegally as a religious body, which publicly proclaims allegiance to the Republic of Iran and vows disobedience to Nigeria’s laws and constituted authority.
The IMN sect members beginning with their leader have dispensed themselves as both terrorists and aggressors that have been radicalized, militarized and funded by foreign elements and should neither have a place nor a chance to operate in our country with such impunity and lawlessness. Mr. Presidsnt Sir, the bulk is on your table to again, save Nigerians from their swords and the looming catastrophe as reflected in the actions of armed protesters in Nigeria.
Finally, I make haste to plead with Nigerians and the rest of the world particularly America’s President Donald Trump and British’s newest Prime Minister, Mr. Boris Johnson to stand with Nigeria against acts of destructive religious fanaticism, which have morphed into embryonic stages of terrorism as demonstrated by the Shiites in Nigeria.
I fear that this dangerous group is fast spreading tentacles around the world and I urge that all Nigerians must stand with Mr. President to get rid of the IMN violent extremism before it is too late. I am urging Nigerians to have uniformity of reason by chorusing with one voice, the monsters we have known of the IMN in Nigeria before they plunge Nigerian into another brand of explosive terrorism. They are terrorists and should have no place in our society.
Mr. President Sir, you must stand firm at this hour and never yield to the gang -up by those who want to take Nigeria back to Egypt. Nigerians are solidly behind you!
Thank You, Your Excellency for the audience.
