Nigeria’s have for a week received the reported news of a cease-fire arrangement between Boko Haram and the FG with caution. Everyone knew that until Abubakar Shekau, the sect’s leader releases a new recording, no one could say for certain if the claims made by Kabiru Tanimu Turaki, the minister of special duties and chairman of the presidential committee on Dialogue and Peaceful Resolution of Security Challenges in the North, was real.
Now Shekau has spoken in a new video obtained by the AFP, and his words are emphatic - “The claim that we have entered into a truce with the
government of Nigeria is not true. We don’t know Kabiru Turaki. We have never spoken with him. He is lying,” Shekau said.
His statement is a big blow for the FG which had claimed in the past week that it was in negotiation with the “authentic” Boko Haram and that a formal cease-fire deal will be signed publicly soon even though a private agreement has been reached.Shekau did not only deny negotiating with the FG, but he also endorsed the July 6 attack on a government owned school in Yobe, that killed 29 students (according to military figures, although some papers place it as high as 42). He however did not claim responsibility for the massacre.
In the 10-minute video speech, Shekau said, “We fully support the attack on this Western education school in Mamudo.” Mamudo is a town near Potiskum in Yobe state.The Yobe attack was the third school attack in recent weeks and the second in Yobe.
Shekau voiced similar support of the Damaturu attack, describing all “Western education schools” as a “plot against Islam”.He however stopped short of claiming to have ordered the killings.
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