Nigeria’s Boko Haram Leader Menaces Cameroon’s Biya in Video

 January 07, 2015 9:41 AM 

A man claiming to be the leader of the Nigerian Islamist militant group Boko Haram threatened Cameroon’s President Paul Biya in a video posted on YouTube. 

“If you do not repent then you will see the dire consequences,” the man claiming to be Abubakar Shekau, dressed in black and firing an AK-47 assault rifle, said in the 18-minute clip, which couldn’t be immediately verified.

Cameroon, which borders Nigeria, has in recent weeks intensified its fightback against Boko Haram’s incursions into its territory. Biya has sent more than 1,000 troops to the frontier to battle the group, which has killed thousands in its attempts to impose Islamic law in Nigeria.

The Nigerian military has repeatedly claimed to have killed Shekau, and in October the authorities said they had agreed a cease-fire with the group. Since then, violence in the the north has continued unabated. On Jan. 3, Boko Haram captured the headquarters of a multinational military force in the northeastern Nigerian town of Baga set up to combat the insurgency.

The figure who says he is in charge of the rebellion has previously turned his ire on U.S. President Barack Obama, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, and Lamido Sanusi, a former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria who emerged last year as one of the country’s most senior Islamic figures.

Ready to Die

Nigeria, which has Africa’s biggest economy, is scheduled to hold elections in February in which Jonathan’s ruling People’s Democratic Party will face what may be its toughest challenge at the ballot box since the oil-exporting nation ended military rule in 1999. The opposition All Progressives Congress says Jonathan’s government has failed to guarantee the country’s security and neglected the northeast.

“Democracy is not rule by God,” Shekau said in the video clip, speaking in the Arabic, Hausa and Fulani languages, reasserting his willingness to die.

Boko Haram kidnapped more than 200 girls from a schoolhouse in northeastern Nigeria in April. In video messages after the abduction, Shekau threatened to sell them into slavery, and said many of them had been “married off.” Most of the children are still missing.

Governors of northeastern Nigerian states Adamawa, Borno and Yobe, the worst-hit by Boko Haram’s attacks, have asked Jonathan for more troops to fight the rebels, Abdullahi Bego, spokesman for Yobe state Governor Ibrahim Gaidam, said by phone today. Borno and Adamawa states share land borders with Cameroon.

To contact the reporter on this story: Mustapha Muhammad in Kano at mmuhammad10@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Nasreen Seria at nseria@bloomberg.net Chris Kay, Karl Maier, John Bowker