Leader of Nigerian jihadist group Boko Haram is presumed dead again

Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau committed suicide during a fight against members of a rival jihadist group, the Islamic State in West Africa (ISWAP) group said in a recording sent to AFP on Sunday.. With this, he has been presumed dead nearly 10 times in recent years, so it is still early to know if the information is true.

“Shekau preferred to be humiliated in the afterlife than to be humiliated on earth. He killed himself by detonating an explosive,” a voice similar to that of ISWAP leader Abu Musab Al Barnawi said, speaking in the Kanuri language, in a recording given to AFP by a source who usually distributes his statements..

Boko Haram has not commented on the reports about the death of its leader, which are being investigated by the Nigerian army.. The ISWAP explains in the recording that it sent its fighters to a Boko Haram enclave in the Sambisa forest and that they found Shekau sitting inside his house, after which a shootout began.. “From there he withdrew and escaped, ran and hid in the bushes for five days. However, the fighters continued to search for him,” the voice said..

After finding him, ISWAP fighters urged him and his followers to surrender, according to the recording, but Shekau refused and took his own life.. ISWAP, recognized by the IS group, was born in 2016 from a split with Boko Haram, which it accuses above all of murdering Muslim civilians.. It has been increasing its power and is already the dominant jihadist group in northeastern Nigeria.. “We are very happy,” the voice indicates, adding that Shekau was “someone who committed terrorist acts and unimaginable atrocities.”

Since 2019, the Nigerian military has withdrawn from villages and minor bases to entrench itself in “supercamps,” a strategy that has not been without criticism, as it allows jihadists to move unchallenged through rural areas. After seizing the Sambisa forest, ISWAP sent messages to the inhabitants of the Lake Chad region, on the borders of Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad, to welcome them to their self-proclaimed “caliphate,” said Sallau Arzika, a fisherman from Baga, a town on the shores of the lake.

Since the rebellion by the radical Islamist group Boko Haram began in 2009 in northeastern Nigeria, the conflict has left nearly 36,000 dead and two million displaced.