Boko Haram message to buhari

Kano - The jihadist group Boko Haram has
released a new video without its embattled
leader Abubakar Shekau, lending weight to
claims by the Nigerian army he had been
gravely wounded in an air strike.
The 13-minute video posted on YouTube late on
Tuesday shows an unidentified man in a flowing
white robe and a sword dangling by his side
presiding over Eid prayers in a mosque.
Hundreds of poorly fed villagers and children,
who are apparently Boko Haram supporters, are
seen in the video filmed on Monday.
The man says he is representing Shekau, who
had allegedly been ousted by the Islamic State
to which Boko Haram pledged allegiance in
March 2015.
"My brethren, today is Eid ..in the Islamic
Caliphate under the leadership of Abubakar
Shekau, may Allah protect him," he says,
speaking in the local Hausa language.
The Nigerian army claimed on August 23
Shekau had been seriously wounded in the
shoulder in an air raid in which several
commanders were killed.
"We convey our Eid greetings to our brethren
all over the world under the Islamic Caliphate
and especially our leader Abubakar Shekau,
may Allah protect him," the man in the video
says.
'No retreat, no surrender'
He then taunts the government of President
Muhammadu Buhari, saying Boko Haram would
fight on despite a military crackdown, adding:
"No retreat, no surrender."
It was not immediately clear if the video, which
was technically superior to previous ones, was
shot in Boko Haram's Sambisa forest
stronghold in the northern state of Borno or
elsewhere.
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.
Despite earlier claims by the Nigerian
government that Shekau had been killed, the
militant leader has resurfaced later in videos.
Last month, the ISIS replaced Shekau with Abu
Musab al-Barnawi, the son of Boko Haram
founder Mohammed Yusuf, in an apparent split
in the group whose insurgency has killed some
20,000 and displaced more than 2.6 million s
ince 2009.
Boko Haram has also released a video showing
at least one of the more than 200 schoolgirls
kidnapped from Chibok more than two years
ago, and called for its detained fighters to be
freed.
The mass kidnapping of schoolgirls from the
remote town of Chibok provoked global outrage
and brought unprecedented attention to Boko
Haram and its bloody quest to create a
fundamentalist state in northeastern Nigeria.
Nigeria is facing security threats on multiple
fronts: Boko Haram Islamists in the northeast,
Biafran separatists in the southeast, oil rebels
in the south and nomadic herdsmen in the
central states.