A MAN claiming to be the leader of jihadist group Boko Haram has posted a video on social media, claiming he is in “good health” and “safety” after the Nigerian army reported he had been seriously injured.
The man claims to be Abubakar Shekau, who was thought to have been seriously wounded in the shoulder during an air strike last month.
The Nigerian military played down the video, saying it had wiped out 22 Boko Haram fighters in a clash in the country’s north.
“You have been spreading in the social media that you injured or killed me,” the man believed to be Shekau said in the 40-minute video released on YouTube and dated September 25.
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READ NOW“Oh tyrants, I’m in a happy state, in good health and in safety.”
Last month, IS high command said Shekau had been replaced as leader by Abu Musab al-Barnawi, the 22-year-old son of Boko Haram’s founder Mohammed Yusuf.
But Shekau has maintained he is still in charge.
Nigerian authorities have reported him dead several times before, but the army’s claim was bolstered when Boko Haram — which pledged allegiance last year to the Islamic State (IS) group — released a video on September 13 without Shekau in it.
However, in the video released Sunday, Shekau points to a date on an Islamic calendar corresponding to September 25, 2016.
Speaking in Hausa, Arabic and English and in dialects spoken in northeast Nigeria he appeared to be in good physical health.
He used the video to issue threats against President Muhammadu Buhari, who appealed to the United Nations this week for help in negotiating the release of the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapped by the militants more than two years ago.
“If you want your girls, bring back our brethren,” Shekau says. Nigerian armed forces spokesman Sani Usman downplayed the video and portrayed Shekau as crazed.
“He ... tried, albeit failingly, to deny the air raid by the Nigerian Air Force in which he was wounded,” Usman said.
“The video has shown beyond all reasonable doubt the earlier suspicion that the purported factional terrorist group leader is mentally sick and unstable.”
Separately, the army said “suspected remnants” of Boko Haram attacked troops near Logomani, in northern Borno state, in the early hours of Sunday.
“Our troops fought gallantly and (...) the troops counted 22 dead bodies of Boko Haram fighters,” it said in a statement. Four soldiers were killed and two wounded.
Boko Haram, which has killed at least 20,000 people since 2009 in its quest for a hard line Islamist state in northeast Nigeria, has been in the grip of a power struggle since late last year.
But it was the mass kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls from the northeastern town of Chibok in July 2015 that brought unprecedented attention to Boko Haram, sparking a global campaign to “Bring Back Our Girls”.
In a fresh incident on Sunday, Boko Haram attacked a village near Gamboru, about 30 kilometres (18 miles) from Logomani, near the border with Cameroon.
“The bodies of five residents who had gone to work on their farms were brought back to the town by civilian vigilantes,” Gamboru resident Umar Ari told AFP.
Nigerian soldiers, with the support of regional troops, have recaptured swathes of territory lost to the jihadists since they launched a military campaign in February 2014.