The military's fight against Boko Haram – officially known as Jama'at Ahl al Sunna li al Da'wa wa al Jihad – began when the Islamist group launched armed attacks following the murder of its founder Mohammed Yusuf by the Nigerian police in 2009 (AC Vol 54 No 6 Taking the hostage road)...
The factions have been at war for the last five years after Islamic State dethroned Shekau and installed the much younger Abu Musab al-Barnawi son of Boko Haram founder and Shekau's mentor Mohammed Yusuf as the new leader (AC Dispatches 25//5/21 Two deaths that could strengthen the insurgents)...
DISPATCHES
Shekau fell out with Al Barnawi the son of Boko Haram founder Mohammed Yusuf in a leadership feud over both tactics and doctrine...
READ FOR FREE
His Commissioner for Religious Affairs Buji Foi was widely seen as close to Boko Haram and was arrested during the police crackdown on the group in 2009 during which its founder Mohammed Yusuf was killed...
READ FOR FREE
In the mid-2000s Sanusi dismissed the late Sheikh Jaafar Mahmud Adam (a popular cleric under whose tutelage the late Mohammed Yusuf the founder of Boko Haram emerged) as a 'religious demagogue'...
Shekau and his slain predecessor Mohammed Yusuf leaned more towards the Afghan Taliban than Al Qaida...
He struck a deal with the leader of Boko Haram the late Mohammed Yusuf for political support in return for demands that included the release of Abubakar Adam Kambar then in gaol for armed robbery...
Two days later Mohammed Yusuf was captured alive by troops handed over to police and also killed at police headquarters...
The leader Abubakar Shekau was second-in-command until Mohammed Yusuf was killed in police custody in July 2009...
’ NDIM apparently believes the hasty arraignment of 17 policemen before a federal high court in Abuja over the murder in 2009 of the Boko Haram leader Mohammed Yusuf and two others was an attempt to appease the Islamists...
Two years ago when a group of Boko Haram militants organised an uprising in Borno State police arrested their leader Mohammed Yusuf and claimed ‘to have shot him while he was trying to escape’ – a version of events strongly disputed by local human rights groups (AC Vol 50 No 16 Islamists raise the stakes as they take on Yar'Adua and Inside Boko Haram)...
The new Governor of Borno State Kashim Shettima has tried to talk to Boko Haram which states that its preconditions for negotiation are the release of all its members from police custody the implementation of Sharia in all states where Muslims are in the majority the prosecution of all police officers involved in the killing of Mohammed Yusuf and the release of a report on human rights abuses in Borno State in 2009 (written by a committee headed by the former National Security Advisor Major Gen...