Who is Abubakar Shekau, the leader of Boko Haram killed by ISIS?
The announcement that Abubakar Shekau, the leader of Boko Haram in Nigeria, has been killed ends a debate over the fate of the group’s deadliest leader in Africa in recent days.
According to an audio recording obtained by Reuters and Agence France-Presse, an alleged leader of the West African terrorist group ISIS, Abu Musab al-Barnawi, said that Shekau was killed May 18 after detonating an explosive device when the group pursued him following a battle.
Al-Barnawi added : “He killed himself immediately by detonating an explosive device.”
“Meanwhile, a Nigerian intelligence report, published by a government official and researchers on Boko Haram, confirmed that Shekau was killed.”
“Over the past 12 years, the leader of Boko Haram has been reported killed on several occasions, including announcements from the military, but he was later shown in a video.”
Abubakar Shekau, the leader of Boko Haram and the “emir of Africa” of IS, is the godfather of chaos and bloodshed in the western and central parts of the black continent.
He was born in the town of Shekau, in the local Tarmua district of Yobe State and is a Kanuri native.
He studied at the Borno College of Legal and Islamic Studies but left the college for ideological reasons without a degree.
The leader of Africa’s deadliest organization, which has spread a line of blood and terror across 4 black countries – Chad, Niger, Cameroon and Nigeria – since 2010, has tried to write an end that resembles the stories of history’s greatest criminals; through suicide.
Shekau then pledged allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi before he was killed in 2015, and Boko Haram, notorious for kidnapping schoolgirls in Nigeria, is becoming the “West African State,” expanding into neighboring countries as ISIS funds flow in.
But the man’s end also came at the hands of ISIS in a bloody confrontation with its rival ISIS group, forcing him to carry out a suicide attempt that was different accounts about the details of the attempt and his fate after that.
“One story is that he shot himself in the chest, another says he blew himself up so as not to fall into captivity, before the recording confirms the latter.”
These clashes were rooted in 2016, when Boko Haram split into two groups – one led by Abubakar Shekau and with the group’s historical leaders, and another IS-affiliated group with a stronghold in the vicinity of Lake Chad, both fighting for leadership in West and Central Africa.
Years ago, the US put up a $7 million reward for Shekau, Africa’s most wanted man since the 2014 kidnapping of 300 schoolgirls in Nigeria’s Chibok region, an incident that sparked widespread international outrage.
Shekau is one of the most brutal and criminal terrorists in the world and is described as a “warlord” who turned Boko Haram from an obscure fundamentalist sect into an army of terrorists and killed tens of thousands in confrontations with Nigerian security.
