US ANNOUNCES $7m BOUNTY ON BOKO HARAM LEADER, SHEKAU

Shekau, World's 8th Most Wanted Terrorist

The United States Department of State is offering a reward of up to $7m (N2.5bn) for information leading to the arrest of Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau. The government has on three separate occasions claimed to have killed Shekau but the Boko Haram leader has resurfaced on several videos to show that he is still alive.

The Rewards for Justice Programme, which is the counterterrorism rewards programme of the US Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service, made this announcement in a tweet on its official Twitter handle on Tuesday.

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The tweet read, “The United States Department of State offers a reward up to $7m for information leading to the arrest of the terrorist, Abubakar Shekau, leader of Boko Haram.”

The terrorist group, which has been headed by Shekau since 2009, has killed tens of thousands and displaced about 2.3 million from their homes, many of whom have fled to Cameroon, Chad, and Niger. It was at one time the world’s deadliest terror group according to the Global Terrorism Index, having carried out suicide bombings of police buildings and the United Nations office in Abuja.

The group has carried out mass abductions which included the kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls from Chibok in April 2014 and in 2016 abducted some schoolgirls from Dapchi in Yobe State, releasing all of them except Leah Sharibu for refusing to deny her Christian faith.

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The Federal Government has since initiated a plan to give amnesty to repentant terrorists while the Senate is currently debating a bill to establish an agency that will cater for the repentant insurgents.

Shekau is currently the 8th most wanted terrorist by the United States.