United States of America on Monday offered to give out $23 million to people who are able to provide useful information that can lead to the capture of Abubakar Shekau, leader of the Boko haram Islamist sect and four other leaders of militant groups on the continent.
Shekau has the highest reward tag of $7million, having recently urged fellow Islamists in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq to weigh in with reinforcements towards its bid to Islamise Nigeria.
Others on the wanted list of the US State Department’s Rewards for Justice programme are Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), whose veteran Mokhtar Belmokhtar, has a $5million reward tag; another AQIM leader Yahya Abou Al-Hammam who similarly has a reward tag of $5million;
Malik Abou Abdelkarim, a senior fighter with AQIM; and Oumar Ould Hamaha of Mali’s Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) who are up for $3m.
According to a senior State Department officer, AQIM has been increasingly active in North and West Africa, and is one of the world’s leading kidnap-for-ransom groups at the moment.
Only last week, the wanted Shekau released a video claiming that the sect has been having upper hand over the Joint Military task Force (JTF) since last month’s state of emergency declaration in three states of the North. He said his group has lost few men, well below the losses of the Military.
The U.S. recognizes that under Shekau’s leadership, Boko Haram’s capability has grown, from the era of improvised explosive devices in mid-2011 to the use of car bombs later that same year.
Shekau was blacklisted by the United States in 2012 although the Boko Haram sect itself has not been designated a foreign terrorist organization. U.S. is also worried by Boko Haram’s increasing ties with AQIM and Nigeria’s Boko Haram, noting that the Nigeria sect has been benefitting from exchange of arms and ammunition and men from its foreign counterpart.
