Boko Haram Leader Shekau Absent From Latest Video

Boko Haram has released a new video on the insurgency in Nigeria, with its leader Abubakar Shekau again failing to appear in it. His continued absence has increased speculation about his fate.

Abubakar Shekau

He was last heard from in March, when he released an audio message pledging allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) group.

Soon thereafter, Nigeria’s military said it had recaptured all towns and cities from Boko Haram.

In the eight-minute video, an unidentified young man spoke in the name of the Islamic State in West Africa calling on people to be patient: “We are still present everywhere we had been before.”

The video showed the militants attacking a security checkpoint, seizing weapons, and slitting the throat of a man dressed in a police uniform.

Shekau also failed to appear in a Boko Haram video released in June.

According to the BBC, this will renew speculation that he is either deep in hiding, or has been wounded and even killed.

Shekau was reportedly killed some time last year

Regardless of Shekau’s fate, it was clear from the video that some militants in Nigeria are still determined to fight.

The video is gruesome, but its production sleek, suggesting that it was produced with the help of IS-allied propaganda units, said the BBC.

The young militant spoke in the regional Hausa language, with an accent from the Kanuri ethnic group, to which Shekau belongs.

Shekau became Boko Haram leader following the killing of the terror group’s founder, Muhammad Yusuf, in police custody in 2009.

Previous reports about his death proved to be untrue.

He sparked global outrage when Boko Haram abducted more than 200 girls from a boarding school in Chibok town in Borno State in April 2014.