Indeed, he had in the video asked Lt Col. Musa, who issued the statement on his death, to ‘bury his head in shame’. Shekau, who spoke in Hausa, said: “The world should know that I cannot die except by the will of Allah. I have told you that all that I do is prescribed by the Quran. The essence of it is to carry out the injunctions…The world should know that I am alive and will only die at the appointed time. Everybody should be judged according to the dictates of his conscience.” He was surrounded in the video, made available to some journalists in Maiduguri, by some of his militants, all dressed in military camouflage, as he accepted responsibility for the different attacks in Borno State then.

•Seized Boko Haram armoured tank

While mocking the Army, Shekau claimed that his militants had succeeded in snatching three armoured tanks, a large cache of arms and fleets of military vehicles from the Nigerian troops. The Army had refused to confirm the authenticity of the video then, as its spokesperson said it was examining the veracity of the recording, especially, the person who claimed to be Shekau in it, though it was gathered that the top military hierarchy believed that Shekau was dead and the man assuming his identity in the video was just trying to create confusion. President Jonathan further muddled the pond of confusion when he declared a week after the release of the video that he did not know if Shekau was dead or alive even though as Commander-in-Chief, he is expected to receive regular briefing from security agencies.

“I don’t know whether Abubakar Shekau is dead or alive. I don’t know him. I have never met him. You journalists know more than us, some of you always talk to them (Boko Haram),” the President said in response to a question tweeted to the panel of interviewers on a live programme on national television.

Shekau Truly Dead – Security Agencies
Though it was not clear on why they were not able to convince the President to buy into their conviction that the authentic spiritual leader of Boko Haram is dead, this magazine however gathered that the top echelon of the security agencies continue to believe that the man who continues to appear in the different videos released to the public is an impostor. As late as May this year, Marilyn Ogar, spokesperson for the Department of State Security Services, DSS, had told journalists that the man claiming to the leader of Boko Haram in recent videos released by the sect was not the original Abubakar Shekau that was known.

“Boko Haram has become a franchise, anybody can assume and lay claim to any name. What I know is that the original Abubakar Shekau is dead. The person claiming to be the national leader now is not the original Abubakar Shekau,” Ogar said in reaction to questions from journalists on the issue.

Apart from the original Shekau, the DSS spokesperson said one Abu Qaqa, who she said had also assumed the name in the past, was also dead and that others bearing the name now are fake. “If security sources tell you that somebody is dead, you don’t have to come out and doubt that,” she added in a tone suggestive of annoyance with the incredulity of journalists present at the occasion about the claim that Shekau was dead. But the cynicism about the claims persisted.

Cynicism About Shekau’s Death
The doubt of Shekau’s death was particularly fueled by the increasing gruesomeness of attacks by the Boko Haram insurgents as well as regular release of video recordings in which Shekau claimed responsibility for the attacks on behalf of his deadly group. Such cynicism was reflected in a newspaper headline – “Military kills Shekau Again” – that heralded the latest claim of Shekau’s death early last week. The credibility of the claim was further assailed by claims and counter claims between the Nigerian and the Cameroonian armed forces over who killed the Boko Haram leader and where he was killed.

Who Killed Shekau?
A report in a newspaper in Cameroon on Sunday 21 September, quoting a statement by the country’s military establishment had indicated that the Cameroonian Army (Armee Camerounaise) killed Shekau that weekend following during an aerial bombardment of the terrorist leader’s hideout near the Nigerian border town of Gamboru Ngala as thousands of Boko Haram fighters tried to enter Cameroon. The statement was accompanied by photographs of the allegedly dead Shekau.

The claim by Cameroon surfaced as the Nigerian Defence Headquarters, in a series of tweets and unsigned statements published on a website, also indicated that its troops might have killed Shekau on 17 September during one of the desperate attempts by the insurgent group to capture Konduga as a leeway to attack Maiduguri.