Jihad monitoring group SITE Intelligence said a new audio message released from Shekau and addressed to the leader of ISIS refuted suggestions that he was unable to serve as Boko Haram’s leader.
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“There is somebody apparently called Mahamat Daoud who is said to have replaced Abubakar Shekau, and he wants to negotiate with the Nigerian government”, Deby had said on Chad state radio, but had not given the source of his information.
Shekau, in the audio had described as lies, rumours that he had been decapitated as head of the militant sect, Boko Haram, saying he is still alive and in charge.
Army spokesman Sani Kukasheka Usman said it did not matter, at this stage, whether Mr Shekau was dead or alive.
Air Chief Marshal Alex Badeh, the defense chief fired when Buhari got rid of the top echelon of Nigeria’s military last month, complained last week that “fifth columnists” in the military have leaked operational plans to Boko Haram. “If it were true, my voice wouldn’t have been heard, now that I am speaking”, he said, according to AFP.
Boko Haram was founded in 2002 to oppose Western-style education.
The military under Buhari’s predecessor Goodluck Jonathan was heavily criticised for poor handling of the insurgency and its failure to free more than 200 schoolgirls abducted from the northeastern town of Chibok in April last year.
Terrorist groups tend to use the statements and videos that they release as political tools to spread either fear or extremist propaganda and sometimes deliberately misguide the governments that they are battling.
The Nigerian army said the attack “was thwarted by a gallant vigilante group member”.
The jihadists have recently extended their attacks into border areas of Cameroon, Chad and Niger.
In a brief but colourful swearing-in ceremony of the service chiefs at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, President Buhari noted that the activities of the insurgents have claimed many lives and destroyed the economic lives of the people.
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First, Shekau – not known for being camera-shy – has not appeared on video for six months, raising the possibility that he has indeed been injured or killed by offensives during that time by Nigerian, Chadian and Cameroonian troops.
