In the report translated by SITE Intelligence Group, al-Barnawi said his group “remained a force to be reckoned with” and said it had been drawing new recruits – all of whom had vowed to to fight “Christianization of society”.
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He said the military was certain that Boko Haram was “in disarray and collapsing”.
“The way that they refer to Shekau, it leaves open the question of whether or not he has been killed”, Michael Smith, a terrorism analyst at Kronos Advisory, told Foreign Policy in a phone call on Wednesday.
“If ISIS gets to appoint senior leadership for BH, then they are probably running the Nigerian terror group as a local franchise”, he said.
There was no mention of Mr. Abubakar Shekau, former Boko Haram leader in the magazine.
The Islamic State, better known as ISIS, has announced a new leader for the insurgent group, Boko Haram.
At least 20,000 people have been killed in its trail of destruction and 2.2 million others have been forced to flee their homes, triggering a catastrophic humanitarian crisis.
“Even if they say they will not be attacking mosques, people are not going to believe it, because they know how unsafe this group is”, says DW correspondent Al-Amin.
Abu Musab al-Barnawi, thought to be a pseudonym, was named by the ISIS newspaper al-Nabaa on Wednesday as the new “Wali”, or governor, of its so-called West Africa Province.
Boko Haram last week ambushed a humanitarian convoy, killing three civilians including a United Nations employee, and causing the suspension of United Nations aid to volatile areas in the north-east.
Since the pledge, Barnawi has appeared in several videos distributed by Boko Haram, claiming responsibility for successive attacks, earning him the reputation of group spokesperson, experts say. According the the wire service, a senior USA general said in June that the group “had fractured internally, with a big group splitting away from Shekau over his failure to adhere to guidance from Islamic State”.
The Nigerian military has not been able to deal with this insurgency.
“As far as we are concerned, what Boko Haram or their cohorts are doing is of no relevance to our operations against them”.
They said Boko Haram today is weaker and controls far less territory than before the pledge of allegiance to IS previous year.
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Boko Haram has lost much of its territory to regional forces from Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and the Niger Republic.
