On the same day of the announcement, the U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, paid a trip to Africa’s highest populated country.
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“Troops on Operation LAFIYA DOLE stationed at Darul Jamel, on the fringes of Sambisa forest, northern parts of Borno State, yesterday evening successfully repelled an attempted attack on their location by remnants of Boko Haram terrorists”, the spokesperson for the army, Sani Usman, a colonel, said in a statement.
A brief statement Tuesday does not say how the military got this information. The account leaves unanswered questions of how the military knew the wounds were fatal, and how it could be so specific about a shoulder injury when the attack came from the air.
He is expected to give a speech on interreligious tolerance, in the northwestern Sokoto State later Tuesday morning.
The SecState further congratulated the military on its recent successes in the fight against Boko Haram, as it has reclaimed swathes of territory from the extremist group, freeing thousands of hostages.
He praised the courage and sincerity of the Sultan for always forcefully condemning violent extremism, which has created negative perception problems for Islam and Muslims in Nigeria and elsewhere in the world. Nations need to do more than just denounce dead-end ideologies. Washington blocked arms sales to Mr. Buhari’s predecessor Goodluck Jonathan, partly over human-rights concerns such as treatment of captured insurgents.
But since President Muhammadu Buhari took office past year, U.S. officials have moved to sell as many as 12 light attack aircrafts to the country, according to Reuters.
On Wednesday Kerry is scheduled to meet representatives of local NGOs helping to fight corruption – a priority of the Buhari administration – before flying to Saudi Arabia where he will discuss the Yemen crisis, the war in Syria and the global fight against the Islamic State group.
Kerry “made very, very strong commitments to the (Nigerian) government that we are going to look at what we can do differently”, the official said, adding that the package for the aircraft was still being considered and needed congressional approval. Nigerian security forces have at least three times in the past declared that they have killed or fatally wounded Shekau.
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Nigeria’s military announced it had killed several leaders of Boko Haram in an airstrike including the leader of one faction, Abubakar Shekau. In 2013, the USA government announced a reward of $7 million for Shekau’s location. According to analysts, Isis had grown tired of Shekau’s attacks on mosques and Muslim markets. Shekau, however, apparently rejected his dismissal in an audio message.
