By Olatunbosun Obafemi
The Nigerien army has announced the killing of Boko Haram commander, Bakura, during a targeted military operation in the Lake Chad basin, an area where Niger shares borders with Nigeria, Chad, and Cameroon.
In a statement released this week, the army said Bakura, a feared jihadist leader, was killed in a “surgical operation” carried out on an island in the Diffa region of southeast Niger on August 15. According to the military, a fighter jet launched three successive strikes on positions previously occupied by the insurgent leader in the locality of Shilawa.
Bakura, identified by the army as Ibrahim Mahamadu, was said to be around 40 years old and originally from Nigeria. He joined Boko Haram more than 13 years ago and rose through the ranks before taking over leadership of a faction of the group following the death of Abubakar Shekau in May 2021 during clashes with rival fighters.
Unlike members who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), Bakura remained loyal to Shekau’s ideology and led a splinter group that retreated to the islands on the Niger side of Lake Chad with dozens of fighters.
Boko Haram’s insurgency, which began in northeast Nigeria in 2009 with the aim of establishing an Islamic caliphate, has killed more than 40,000 people and displaced over two million across the Lake Chad region. The violence has since spread beyond Nigeria’s borders, with Niger first suffering attacks in 2015 when the militants struck the town of Bosso on the lake’s shores.
The Nigerien army described Bakura as a “feared leader” whose death represents a significant blow to the group’s operations in the region. The statement, however, did not provide details on whether other fighters were killed or captured during the raid.
Despite the death of Shekau and now Bakura, Boko Haram and ISWAP continue to pose major security challenges in the Lake Chad basin, with governments of the affected countries maintaining joint military efforts to curb the insurgency.
