Weeks after Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau took his own life to avoid capture by advancing ISWAP, the news has filtered out the captor himself has died.
Abu Musab Al-Barnawi was killed in military attack in Borno the last week of August , according to a report by the Daily Trust.
The death is coming amidst the flood of the late Shekau’s followers in Boko Haram surrendering to the military in the Operation Safe Corridor.
Security analysts attribute this to the rudderless situation Shekau death brought to the rank of Boko Haram, once the most vicious terrorist organization in the world.
Some of the Boko Haram fighters declared allegiance to Al Barnawi whom the fighters consider benign and gracious for targeting the military and Christians only—unlike Shekau who killed Muslims, too.
Now Al-Barnawi, the son of Mohammed Yususf, founder of Boko Haram, has been killed, five years after ISIS declared him leader of ISWAP—a breakaway group of Boko Haram from Shekau.
Because ISWAP is a franchise of IS, its rank may not be slip into disarray as Boko Haram did after its leader died, analysts say.
Al-Barnawi’s killing, however, remains another milestone in Nigeria’s decade-long war against terrorists.