Thread by @HumAngle_

Nigeria’s Terror King, Shekau, Connects East, West And Centre In A Puzzling Agenda

Published on July 12, 2020

[THREAD]

Scorned and underrated, Abubakar Shekau, the leader of #BokoHaram is currently pulling a massive stealth strategy in an organisational makeover destined to connect the northeast, the north-west and the north-central in a bewildering expansionist agenda.

Defined by welcoming former apostates; engaging in factional reconciliations; admitting of modest ideological shifts; and proposing a balanced role for clerics and combatants in his group,

Shekau is on the move to consolidate his ranks and establish himself as the ‘African Jihadi Caliph’ after his 2011-12 falling out with Al Qaeda, the embattled Islamic State in Iraq and the Levent.

Often portrayed as a silly sick bag, on account of his frequent melodramatic video appearances, where he is either dancing, singing, mimicking others or indiscriminately shooting machine guns into the air,

insurgency experts and knowledgeable sources on the identity of social movements in the Nigerian northeast, believe Shekau is emerging more of a strategic and calculated schemer than past or current assessment of him is admitting.

Insurgency experts in Maiduguri and Abuja told #HumAngle that no other leader has so far exerted comparable influence to sustain such bloody villainy in the now decade-old insurgency which has consumed about 30,000 lives and scattered more than two million citizens.

After the demise of Muhammed Yusuf in 2009 when he became the putative leader of #BokoHaram, and the immediate period of floundering and mediocre Shekau leadership,

during which he survived several coups and counter-coups by even far more superior fighting forces within the jihadi community, the wily insurgent has embraced a far-reaching restyling with an unmistakable eye on expansionist ambitions.

Experts date this remodelling to 2012 when he lived in Kano, Northwest Nigeria, before moving to the remote forest areas of Alagarno and Sambisa in Borno State in the Northeast.

Read the full report here:
humangle.ng/nigerias-terro…