The terrorist group, Boko Haram, issued a new video yesterday dismissing any suggestion it would surrender.
This came just over a week after the
sect’s shadowy leader Abubakar Shekau appeared in a rare message
looking dejected and frail.
Shekau, who was not seen on camera for
more than a year, released an unverified video late last month and said
his time in charge of the group might be coming to an end.
If the video indeed depicts Shekau, he
appears thin and listless, delivering his message without his trademark
fiery rhetoric, prompting speculation from the army that the sect was on
the verge of collapse in the face of a sustained military
counter-insurgency.
However, in the latest message, Boko
Haram maintained it was a potent fighting force, with insurgents posing
with AK-47s in front of Toyota Hilux pick-up trucks and a lorry mounted
with a military cannon.
“You should know that there is no truce,
there is no negotiation, there is no surrender,” an unidentified masked
man wearing camouflage said in a prepared script in Hausa, in the video
posted on YouTube.
“This war between us will not stop.”
The video, which was of markedly of
better quality than Shekau’s and included Arabic subtitles, featured
nine masked Boko Haram fighters standing on sandy ground in an
undisclosed desert location.
Shekau did not appear in the video but the masked man in the video said he (Shekau) remains the sect’s leader.
He likened Boko Haram to the Islamist insurgencies in Iraq, Libya and Syria.
In March 2015, Boko Haram pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group.
But there were few signs Boko Haram —
now styled as Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP) — has so far
benefited from the partnership.
The army has since then
recovered swathes of territory from the terrorists, liberating
thousands living under Boko Haram control.
An estimated 20,000 people have been killed since Boko Haram began its campaign of violence in 2009 in the Northeast.
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