Is Boko Haram’s leader dead or alive?
The photo arrived cracked and blurry. But the man it purported to show, dead and shirtless, was nonetheless unmistakable. He had the same high cheekbones, the same rounded countenance, the same fuzzy beard — a villainous image that anchored any number of Boko Haram terrorist videos announcing fresh horror and murder.
Was Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau, who orchestrated the kidnapping of more than 200 Nigerian girls, really dead? Had the Cameroon military killed him, as it claimed the photo showed?
If only it were that simple. Twice, Abubakar Shekau, one of the world’s least understood mass killers, was believed dead, and twice he re-emerged to usher in a broader and more diabolical campaign of killings across northern Nigeria. The idea of Abubakar Shekau, it appears, cannot be killed.
On Wednesday, the Nigerian military issued a statement saying the dead man depicted in the Cameroon military’s photograph, who looked just like Abubakar Shekau, was not in fact Shekau. He was a double, someone who has been masquerading as the leader.
The alleged imposter had “been acting or posing on videos as the deceased Abubakar Shekau, the eccentric character known as leader of the group,” a defence department spokesman, Chris Olukolade, said.
The “deceased” Abubakar Shekau? Without offering any proof, Olukolade said Shekau has long been dead, and that his appearance and name are just now a “brand name for the terrorists. … The Nigerian military remains resolute to serve justice to anyone who assumes that designation or title.” Another Nigerian official said, “the original Shekau is dead.”
Prominent Nigerian journalist Ahmad Salkid, who has gotten closer to Boko Haram than any other reporter, immediately expressed skepticism over Shekau’s reported death. “So Shekau has a double?” he wrote on Twitter. “So it was his double who I met during the failed attempt to negotiate an end to the plight of the girls? Oh, Nigeria.”
The back and forth feeds into the killer’s mystique. With Shekau, who has had a $7 million US bounty on his head since 2013, it’s never been clear where his is, whether he’s dead or alive, or whether there are many Abubakar Shekaus.
It’s possible, analysts said, he has numerous doppelgangers roaming Nigeria who, if killed, afford him the opportunity to be resurrected once more and burnish his legend.
Indeed, in some videos Shekaus aren’t consistent with other Shekaus. According to Tracking Terrorism, Shekau speaks in different cadences and has varying mannerisms from video to video.
“In some cases he appears much heavier or much darker in skin colour, and the posturing is very different between each man,” wrote Terrorism Research and Analytics Consortium, the think-tank that publishes Tracking Terrorism.
The Nigerian army can’t figure it out either. Security forces first claimed he was dead in 2009, when police in Maiduguri said they had killed him in a flurry of bullets. But then he appeared in a video months later — a sequence of events repeated last year. “Here is Shekau, Shekau, Shekau, Shekau, original,” the alleged leader chanted upon his return, grinning.
Each time he comes back from the dead, Tracking Terrorism said, Shekau’s megalomania grows. “Shekau is a leader who is overflowing with confidence,” one article stated.
So is he still out there? Most likely yes, somewhere. Shekau wouldn’t inject himself into a pitched battle, Ryan Cummings of South Africa’s Red24 said. He’s “likely” ensconced in the Sambisa Forest or the nearby mountains, far from the fighting, where he reportedly communicates only through videos and text messages.
The question of his death “may not matter much,” John Campbell, of the Council on Foreign Affairs wrote. “Boko Haram is more than Abubakar Shekau, alive or dead.”