Abubakar Shekau.
Jesusegun Alagbe with agency report
A new video was released on Friday by
the Boko Haram jihadist group, denying any suggestion that it might
negotiate with the Federal Government.
This is coming just about a week after
its leader, Abubakar Shekau, said in March that his time as the head of
the group might be coming to an end.
The previous video showed Shekau, who appeared thin and spiritless, delivering his message without his usual fiery manner.
This had prompted speculation from the
Army that the Islamist group was on the verge of collapse in the face of
a sustained military counter-insurgency.
However, in a Friday video posted on
YouTube, which showed men holding AK-47s and posing in front of Toyota
Hilux pick-up trucks and a lorry mounted with a military cannon, Boko
Haram maintained that it was still a potent fighting force and would not
surrender.
According to an AFP report, a masked man
in camouflage said in a prepared script in Hausa that, “You should know
that there is no truce, there are no negotiations, there is no
surrender. This war between us will not stop.”
The video, of markedly better quality
than Shekau’s and including Arabic subtitles, featured nine masked Boko
Haram fighters standing on sandy ground in an undisclosed desert
location.
It is, however, unclear whether Shekau was among the masked people in the video.
“Shekau is still the head of the ‘West
African wing’,” said the masked man, who likened the sect to the
Islamist insurgents in Iraq, Libya and Syria.
Boko Haram, which has killed over 20,000
people and displaced more than two million people from their homes, had
pledged allegiance to ISIS in March 2015.
Meanwhile, the Nigerian Army has won
back a number of territories from the militants, rescuing thousands of
people who had been living under the sect’s control.
Commenting on the new video, an Africa
security specialist, Ryan Cummings, said, “The (new) video appears to
confirm collaboration between Boko Haram and the Islamic State group.
The production quality bears the hallmarks of the Islamic State’s media
wing.”
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