BOKO Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau said the sect would not be defeated by the security forces. The leader of Boko Haram also defended recent attacks on Christians, saying they were revenge for killings of Muslims.
In his first video message, posted on YouTube, Shekau referred to attacks on Muslims in recent years in several parts of northern Nigeria.
Boko Haram militants attacked several churches on Christmas Day, killing dozens of worshippers.
This has led to some reprisals in the mainly Christian South.
Mosques in two states have been attacked.
Thousands of people have fled their homes following the recent attacks, leading some people, including Nigeria's president and the leader of the country's main Christian organisation, to make comparisons with the 1967-70 civil war when leaders of the Igbo ethnic group tried to secede.
In the 15-minute video, Mr Shekau, wearing a red and white turban, a bulletproof vest and sitting in front of two Kalashnikov rifles, said he was responding to recent statements from President Goodluck Jonathan and the leader of the country's main Christian organisation, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN).
He warned President Jonathan that Nigeria's security forces would not be able to defeat the group.
President Jonathan has declared a state of emergency in some northern states but the attacks have continued.
On Tuesday night, gunmen opened fire on a bar in Yobe, killing eight people, including several police officers.
The president recently said that he suspected some officials, politicians and members of the security forces for being sympathisers of Boko Haram.
Defending the latest spate of violence, Mr Shekau referred to the killing of Muslims in places like Jos, Kaduna, Zango Kataf and Tafawa Balewa in recent years.
Some of these places have seen bitter communal clashes but they are often based on long-standing disputes over resources such as land, or are whipped up by politicians, rather than being based on religious differences.
"We are also at war with Christians because the whole world knows what they did to us," Mr Shekau said in the video, speaking in Hausa.
CAN head, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, had said on Saturday that his members would protect themselves against the attacks, which he said suggested "systematic ethnic and religious cleansing.”
On Tuesday, he told the BBC World Service that there should be dialogue with Muslim leaders to halt the violence.
Mr Shekau said the group could only hold talks with the government in accordance with the teachings of Islam.
He said the group's primary targets remained the security forces, who he said had summarily executed their former leader, Mohammed Yusuf, after he was arrested in 2009.
"Everyone has seen how we were treated. People have seen what has happened between us and armed security agents and their accomplices who give them information about us,” Mr Shekau said.
After a lull, in 2010 the group started to stage drive-by shootings on government targets in its base.
Last year, it carried out suicide bombings on high-profile targets, such as the headquarters of the UN and the police in the capital, Abuja.
The group wants to establish Sharia law in Nigeria.
Meanwhile, worried about the incessant killings of innocent citizens in the country by Boko Haram through bomb explosions, the Senate, on Wednesday, asked the Federal Government to go after and deal immediately with their sponsors.
The senators said they were prepared to give their lives for peace to reign in the country.
The Senate president, David Mark, made this known during his concluding remarks in a motion on the general insecurity in the country sponsored by the Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu and 72 others .
Mark said that “nobody is so big that is above the law in this country. If any Nigerian, irrespective of his position, is involved in sponsoring the current level of insecurity, he must be dealt with according to the law and as quickly as possible, because we did not want this to go on as it is becoming an impediment to our desire to develop our country.”
He dispelled the notion that a special ethnic group was being targeted by the islamic sect, noting that “no special group has been targeted deliberately. Those who are doing this are miscreants, misguided Nigerians, who are being sponsored obviously and if government knows who is sponsoring them, they must pick them out and deal with them once and for all, because we cannot condone it.”
The Senate president added that their activities had no religious colouration, explaining that “it has nothing to do with religion, because all the clerics, both Christians and Muslims, have condemned the acts of these terrorists and people who are sponsors.
“ They are people who are prepared, with specific intention to destabilise this country but they will not succeed and the only way they will not succeed is when we all play our roles, the security agents, the ordinary man in the street. It is never a good reason for the level of insecurity we found ourselves today.”
He thanked all contributors to the motion, saying that their contributions were an indication of their concerns and the fearless manner in which they made their comments, noting “I know that when it comes to the issue of Boko Haram, people have been very scared sticking out their necks or even making comments. But today, we have broken that jinx and because we have been able to speak out, I hope well-meaning Nigerians will be able to join us in condemning in totality the existence and operation of Boko Haram in this country.”
He told his colleagues that all of them received threat messages. “People send text messages, if you say this we will kill you, we are going to finish your family.
“The moment you accept a public office, your security is no more in your hands, it is in the hands of God.
“And if they want to kill all of us, 109 senators here for Nigeria to survive, we will offer our lives on a platter of gold to them. Those who received text messages, I urge them to disregard them completely because they cannot do you anything.”
Mark said that the activities of the Islamic sect did not portray Nigerians, noting that Nigerians were a peace-loving people. We love ourselves and we love our neighbours. This idea is absolutely foreign to us, it does not represent us and we hope that it will stop,” he said.
He called on state governments to wake up to their responsibilities in the area of security, believing that “every state has a responsibility in providing security for the people, in making sure that things don’t go wrong because the governors are the chief security officers in the states. They have a lot of responsibilities
“We have terrorism and insurgency on our hands and if we do not handle them properly, they will get out of control. We must do everything humanly possible starting with communities, local government, state level and to the federal level to make sure that we tackle this and nip it in the bud now before it gets out of control”.
He said Nigerians “must not allow history to repeat itself. What is happening now is beginning to give an impression of 1966. It must not happen again, no nation may survive two civil wars and we must never allow ourselves to degenerate into that level.”
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