CONDEMNATION, on Monday, trailed the request by the Boko Haram sect that President Goodluck Jonathan should become a Muslim or resign from office.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported that the sect had in an internet broadcast, on Saturday, asked for Jonathan’s conversion or resignation as the condition for it to stop violence.
However, Jonathan on Sunday said through his spokesman, Dr Reuben Abati, that he would neither resign nor convert to Islam.
“The president cannot be intimidated by any group or individual. The president will never resign.
“He has the mandate of Nigerians to serve his fatherland; nobody should imagine that he will succumb to blackmail,” Abati told journalists in Abuja.
Reacting to the development, the founder of Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC), Dr Fredrick Faseun, said that no group in Nigeria had the right to make such demands.
Faseun told NAN in a telephone interview that it was only the National Assembly that could remove the president.
“I blame the government, especially the security operatives, for being too accommodating with these terrorists and their cohorts,’’ he said.
Commenting, the president of Arewa Youth Consultative Forum, Alhaji Yerima Shettima, also told NAN that the sect lacked the powers to make such demands.
“The threat is neither constitutional nor right,’’ Shettima said.
He urged the group to take advantage of the dialogue being sought by the presidency to make peace with Nigeria.
“Somebody must come forward to take responsibility and represent the sect.
“Government cannot dialogue with people it cannot see,’’ he said.
Contributing, the president of Igbo Youth Congress, Mr Bright Ezeocha, described the demand as meaningless.
“The president should not have even dignified them with a response. It is ridiculous.
“President Goodluck Jonathan was not voted in by the Boko Haram sect, and the sect has no moral right to make such a demand, with the high number of innocent Nigerians it has killed,’’ he said.
Ezeocha urged Jonathan to deploy more security operatives to fish out members of the group and those behind its activities.
“We must learn to respect the office of the president,’’ he said.
In a related development, leader of the Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force, Alhaji Mujaheed Dokubo-Asari, on Monday, said that Nigeria should prepare for another full-blown civil war, if the spate of attacks by the Boko Haram sect is not curbed.
Dokubo-Asari also affirmed that northerners would count many losses if the war should start.
This is just as he called for the dissolution of the President Goodluck Jonathan-led government, so as to pave the way for the convocation of a sovereign national conference, where every ethnic nationality would form a new government.
The former militant leader, who made these declarations while addressing a press conference in Abuja, during a meeting with youths of the Niger Delta, also defended the declaration of secession by the Ogoni people.
“In this issue of Boko Haram, the North will lose. We are just waiting; they will push us to an extent where we will tell Jonathan that you are on your own. But what will happen will be unimaginable in the history of the world.
“We will cut them (northerners) off from the world. We are capable of doing it. There will be no food and they will pay dearly for their actions. This war, as I am talking, is no joke.
“When the war starts, other ethnic groups like the Yoruba and Igbo will tell the North that they are on their own.
We are saying that nothing must happen to Goodluck Jonathan because if anything happens to him, the world will know,” he said.
He stated further that the arrogance of members of the Boko Haram sect was un-Islamic, adding that “the type of bomb they are using is small pikin bomb. If we begin throwing bomb, nobody will stay in Abuja. We don’t manufacture bomb, but we buy bombs and dynamites. I started armed struggle in the Niger Delta. It is because of Jonathan that we quit.”
He threatened that if Ijaw people should retaliate every household in the North would cry, adding that “people must impress it on them the reason they should sheathe their swords and drop their arrogance.”
The activist further criticised the reported decision by the group to turn Nigeria to an Islamic state, saying that, “If I were Jonathan, I will roll out tanks to Maiduguri when they made the demand that everybody must become a Muslim.
“There is need for a national discourse and dialogue. It is only a sovereign national conference that will solve the problem. The solution to the Boko Haram crisis is to dissolve the government and convoke a national conference.
“The Ogonis have done theirs and every other ethnic group should follow suit. Rivers State governor, Rotimi Amaechi, does not understand the dynamics of the struggle. If he ties the Ogoni down, will he tie the hands of other groups? The right to secession is there.”
Dokubo-Asari stated further that the Jonathan-led administration had failed the people, adding that “a time will come, if he does not change, that our people will say, Goodluck, you are on your own. He has the power and moral authority to convene a sovereign national conference. He must correct the 55 years of injustice against us.”
On the face-off between former military president, General Ibrahim Babangida and the Ijaw leader, Chief Edwin Clark over the Boko Haram menace, Dokubo-Asari said Babangida and a former head of state, Major-General Muhammadu had no hands in the crisis.
“I want to be fair to IBB and Buhari on the Boko Haram crisis. They have nothing to do with it and cannot do anything about it. But the fact remains that the political elite class of which IBB and Buhari belongs has not been able to address the problem of Boko Haram.
“They cannot do anything because nobody wants to commit suicide. The Boko Haram people are just killing themselves but they cannot kill us,” he said.
While agitating for a state police, he faulted the amnesty programme of the Federal Government which, he said, amounted to bribery and blackmail.
“The amnesty deal is a bribe. I did not partake in the programme. The programme will not work, because it amounts to criminalising people. Amnesty was just a bribe for the oil to flow,” he said.
Source: Nigerian Tribune
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