The Los Angeles Times quotes Africa Center Director J. Peter Pham on whether Boko Haram’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, is still in charge of the Nigerian terrorist group:
“Certainly the fact that he has not been seen makes it credible or believable that he might have been replaced as leader,” J. Peter Pham, analyst with the Atlantic Council, said of Shekau, adding that Chadian intelligence was in a position to know about his fate.
“On the other hand, they’ve had some spectacular failures in their intelligence as well,” Pham said. “There have been at least four or five times when the Nigerians have announced he’d been killed. If he reappeared tomorrow I wouldn’t be surprised.”