President Jonathan threatens SaharaReporters with libel, defamation

Found this news on Sahara Reporters.
Apparently the president is threatening to sue
the online news agency for defamation for
reporting that his health problems while in
London may have been caused by heavy
partying in celebration of his birthday last
week.
Meanwhile, presidential spokesman Reuben
Abati said yesterday that the president will
return to Nigeria today having been certified
fit to travel after receiving treatment for
acute abdominal pains. The doctors said no
surgical intervention was required. Sahara
Reporters libel report below...
Nigeria leader, President Goodluck
Jonathan, has threatened to take
SaharaReporters to court for reporting
that his health problems in London
during the week may have resulted from
heavy partying in celebration of his 56th
birthday.
In a statement by his spokesman,
Reuben Abati, the president condemned
what he called the “utterly irresponsible,
deplorable, highly unprofessional and
unethical antics of certain fringe
elements operating in the nebulous
sphere of cyberspace who persist in
seizing every opportunity to unjustifiably
malign and impugn the character and
integrity of the elected leader of their
country.”
He said it was regrettable that while the
public had been duly informed that Mr.
Jonathan had received precautionary medical
attention for an unexpected indisposition in
London in compliance with the leader’s
standing instruction that Nigerians must
never be kept in the dark about the state of
his health, SaharaReporters and other
reckless, lawless, impudent and unpatriotic
internet-based ignored the official
script  “with their entirely fictional,
malicious, hate-driven  and scurrilous
distortion of the facts.”
Reiterating the denial of a party in London to
celebrate President Jonathan's birthday on
Wednesday night, Abati said the president
upon arrival spent the day in the privacy of
his hotel room and that it has never been his
custom to celebrate birthday anniversaries. In
particular, there was certainly no drinking
spree, he claimed.
“As unregulated as they are, SaharaReporters
and their ilk are not beyond the bounds of
legal action for libel and willful defamation of
the character and reputation of a President
who has courageously stepped forward to
serve his country,” the statement threatened.
“They know very well that they can never
substantiate or prove the constant false
allegations and innuendoes they publish for
the sole purpose of negatively
portraying President Jonathan and his
administration.
“Their incessant claim of a bibulous President
is pure fiction and blackmail, and the product
of malicious imagination. We warn that our
forbearance of their disrespectful
caricaturing of the President is not limitless.”
Despite Mr. Jonathan’s threats and
deployment of scare tactics, SaharaReporters
stands by its account of the events in London
in the past few days.
While we have the attention of the president
and the hawks in the presidency, we take this
opportunity to draw their attention to the
scandalous quality of Nigerian governance
that SaharaReporters and most of the
Nigerian media have been reporting for many
years, of which his government forms only a
part.
As the 2015 election approaches and Mr.
Jonathan tries to invite the sympathy of
Nigerians in his favor, we challenge him to
prove— including in a court of law—that
these reports have been “entirely fictional,
malicious, hate-driven and scurrilous
distortion of the facts.”