Boko Haram Reportedly Wants to Negotiate

Reprinted from Baptist Press (www.baptistpress.com), news service of the Southern Baptist Convention.

The last Boko Haram video, which was released earlier this month, showed an unidentified young man speaking in the name of the Islamic State in West Africa calling on people to be patient: “We are still present everywhere we had been before”.

Given the many previous reports of Shekau’s demise, followed soon after by videos of him brandishing automatic weapons and spouting invective against the Nigerian state, analysts and diplomats are treating the claims with caution. “I am still alive and I am not dead”, Shekau said. “It should be understood that this is false”.

In the message, addressed to the leader of the Islamic State militant group to whom Boko Haram has pledged allegiance, Mr Shekau said he was still in command.

Chad’s military has been fighting alongside Nigeria, Cameroon and Niger against the militants.

The Telegraph reports that Boko Haram leader Abubakr Shekau ridiculed Chadian President Deby’s claims that the organization had been “decapitated” and would be destroyed by the end of the year.

Shekau had been missing from recent video statements by Boko Haram, prompting rumors he had been killed or badly injured and replaced.

The insurgency has since stepped up its campaign with a wave of raids, bombings and suicide attacks which have left at least 900 people dead in Nigeria alone, according to an AFP count.

“You need to brace up and continue to team up with other stakeholders to come up with a well coordinated joint effort which will bring a desired end to these insurgencies within three months”.

Instead, Buhari has focused most of his energy on fighting governmental corruption.

It was also learnt that the programme has been successful as it had assisted security agencies frustrate many terror plots and attacks across the country before they were hatched.

Noakes sees a coup within Boko Haram’s ranks as “plausible”, however, pointing to numerous potential sources of a schism in the group, including over its failure to hold onto territory.

The spillover of Nigerian-based Boko Haram activity into Cameroon has its roots in historical affinities between the two countries. In the case of both the Taliban and Boko Haram, the reasons for keeping the demise of the leader secret are similar.