Jonathan Replies Boko Haram: 'I Won't Resign!'

PRESIDENT Goodluck Jonathan on Sunday said he would neither resign nor convert to Islam as demanded by the violent Islamic sect, Boko Haram, as a condition to ceasefire.
Jonathan, who spoke through his spokesperson, Reuben Abati, on a day that fivesoldiers died in an attack on a security patrol team in Damaturu, Yobe State, by a suspected Boko Haram bomber, described the call as “rude and a mere blackmail.”

“The President cannot be intimidated by any group or individual. The President will never resign. He has the mandate of Nigerians to serve his father land and nobody should imagine that he will succumb to blackmail,” Abati told journalists in Abuja.

The sect, in a broadcast on Saturday asked Jonathan to either resign or change to Islam before it could lay down its arms against the country.

“We do not kill women and children but those who have offended us, arrested our people and kill them,” the group said in the wake of a promise by Jonathan to end its activities before the end of June this year.

Abati said it was laughable for any group in the country to hand down such a condition to a President who was elected by both Muslims and Christians.

Culled from PUNCH