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Africa Subsaharan

The Making and Unmaking of Abubakar Shekau

2025-12-02

A lengthy dissertation on the life of a Moslem so radical, his co-religionists dropped dime on him.
[HUMANGLEMEDIA] Abubakar Shekau’s fanaticism thrived like wildfire in the Sambisa Forest Reserve. His dramatic reign ended abruptly, but the scars of his terror still linger. This is how he lived.

The night air over the Sambisa forest reserve in North East Nigeria throbbed with the growl of engines. Then came the voices — distant at first, before swelling, amplified through loudspeakers mounted on the backs of trucks. “We seek only Shekau,” the fighters declared. “Surrender, and you will live.”

It was late May 2021, and two columns of fighters of the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) rolled into the dense forest in perfect coordination. Their target was not the Nigerian army, their usual adversary — it was Abubakar Shekau, the leader of rival terror group Boko Haram, who once ruled Sambisa as a self-anointed caliph while his followers wreaked havoc and terrorised northern Nigeria for more than a decade.

But this forest that once echoed gunfire and war chants now seemed overcast in ghastly silence; the fighters who had not abandoned Shekau — as many had taken ISWAP up on the chance to surrender — called it “the silence of waiting”.

In his wooded hideout, Shekau’s health deteriorated. Long afflicted with seizures, in the last days as ISWAP closed in, he reportedly suffered more frequent episodes, floating between rage and lethargy.

Within hours of ISWAP’s advance, the group’s stronghold was surrounded. Witnesses recall the confusion — frantic radio calls, bursts of gunfire, and the echo of men shouting in Kanuri and Arabic as the walls of Shekau’s empire closed in.

More at the link

Posted by:badanov

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