Boko Haram’s Shekau does not exist in reality – DHQ

• Says he is like James Bond, Bruce Lee

The Director of Defence Information, DDI, Maj.-Gen. John Enenche, has revealed that the most wanted Boko Haram terrorist, Abubakar Shekau, does not exist in reality but mere symbolic name to depict leader of the dreaded terrorist group in Nigeria, National Daily reports.

Maj.-Gen. John Enenche identified leader of the Boko Haram sect, Abu Shekau, to exist in the characters Bruce Lee, James Bond, etc., in films shows, saying that the wanted terrorist is merely a “synonym”.

The Director of Defence Information, in a media interaction Channels Television on Wednesday monitored from Lagos, emphasized that there would be many more Shekaus in the future, admitting that the commitment of the military is to take out any Shekau that emerges at any point in time.

The Defense Headquarters was putting up a defence on the ability of the military to track down Shekau, dead or alive, within the 40 days ultimatum given by the Chief of Army Staff, General Buratai, which elapsed last week.

Maj.-Gen. Enenche had narrated: “If you are talking about a Shekau which we have always referred to because there have been so many Shekaus, and I believe that there will be more Shekaus. Shekau is a synonym as far as I am concerned, and Shekau has become a big name like we use to have Bruce Lee, James Bond in those days.

“So, to talk about a definite intelligence or location of a Shekau, I don’t think is necessary. But what we are bound to do and committed to do is that anywhere there is any Shekau, we will always knock him off.

“You will agree with me that within this period that was given, well, you may not have got that information, but there was something about somebody somewhere around a location in Sambisa somewhere and the Air Force went and neutralised the whole place. And after the battle impact assessment, the whole place was finished.

“So, if there was a Shekau according to that information we got that went into hiding in that place, then that one must have been neutralised. And I won’t be surprised to hear that another Shekau is somewhere.

“I don’t expect you to put words into my mouth that I will tell you categorically a Shekau or the Shekau that you know very well has been neutralised. All I have told you is that there have been several Shekaus, there have been several instances, over five times and we will continue to knock out any Shekau that comes on stream. That is what I still stand on that.”

Enenche refuted reports that the military is monitoring hate campaigners with the aim of arresting them, saying the military do not have the powers to arrest Nigerians for such infraction.

ALSO SEE: Abubakar Shekau’s arrest untrue, says Military

The Director of Defence Information admitted that the military would only monitor the social media to sheave out information that could be useful for the planning of its operations.

On speculations that the military was planning to arrest hate campaigners, the DDI said, “There was nothing like that. We do not have power to arrest people for hate speeches. It is just false assertion, against the military, and against my humble self that I said that we will be arresting people or checkmating people.

“The military is not going to be monitoring hate speeches. Did I tell you hate speech in your recordings? We have a strategic media centre, our strategic media centre monitors the media, simple. And it is like that all over the world. And we take that because it helps us to transform the nature of the intelligence to enable us to prepare for whatever call up we get to ensure security in this country.

“Let me tell you and tell the public without fear of anybody; we are trained to do threat analysis of anything that would threaten the security of this country. So, it is part of our threat analysis. Any person can interpret it to mean that it is a follow up to the speech of the Vice-President (Yemi Osinbajo), the then Acting President and then the minister of interior; then that person can be right. Where do we take instruction from, where do we get information from? But on the whole, it is part of what is called threat analysis.”