Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau has warned Cameroon to stop its campaign against the terror group or ‘the same fate that befell Nigeria would befall the country.’
The video, which was posted on January 5, is directly addressed to Cameroon’s president, Paul Biya following onslaughts on members of the group by Cameroonian troops.
“Oh Paul Biya, if you don’t stop this, your evil plot, you will taste what has befallen Nigeria … Your troops cannot do anything to us,” Shekau said in Arabic.
Shekau, in military fatigues and green rubber boots, speaks for more than 17 minutes in the video, flanked by four masked Boko Haram fighters, two of whom held the militants’ black flags.
Two others fighters are seen standing on the back of pick-up trucks fitted with heavy machineguns. Shekau fires an assault rifle into the air at the end of his address.
There was no indication when the video – entitled “Message to President Paul Biya of Cameroon” – was shot or where. It also used the group’s preferred Arabic name “Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad” or “People committed to the propagation of the Prophet’s teachings and jihad.”
In the video, Shekau praises his fighters “inside Cameroonian soil” and calls on Biya to “repent.” “If you do not, you will see what will come from Allah, the All-Powerful who has control over everything in respect of chastisement and calamity,” he says, waving his right index finger.
“Your troops are nothing. Even Nigerian soldiers couldn’t do anything to us.” He also calls on the people of Cameroon to “rebel against democracy and shun it.”
Paul Biya has been mentioned by Shekau before, but it is first time that he has directly addressed Cameroon and is the first admission that Boko Haram has been operating in the country.
Boko Haram had launched attacks on northeastern Nigeria from bases inside Cameroon, but recent months have seen an increase in strikes within Cameroon – including an audacious attack on a military base that was repelled by the country’s air force.
Last weekend, some insurgents captured the key town of Baga and the headquarters of the Multinational Joint Task Force in the Lake Chad area, tightening its control of the remote state of Borno.
Cameroon’s far north region, which adjoins Borno to the east, has come increasingly under fire and on December 28, Yaounde deployed fighter jets against Boko Haram for the first time.
Biya personally ordered the airstrike after the insurgents crossed the border and seized a military camp, the government said on December 29.
The aerial bombardment, hailed as a new phase in the counter-insurgency, forced the Islamists to flee, it was reported.
