Boko Haram leader Shekau is dead say Nigeria officials

On the same day that a man looking nearly identical to Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau released a video of 100 girls kidnapped by his group – the official Nigerian response in the nation's capital was to claim that Mr. Shekau is dead.

Actually, the government's position is that Shekau has been dead for some time – a position widely seen here as a form of counter-propaganda designed to dispirit Boko Haram members.

"Boko Haram is a franchise," Nigerian security spokesperson Marilyn Ogar told a room of local and foreign reporters here for the kidnapping story and who sought details about the video and its call to trade the girls for Boko Haram prisoners. "Anybody can assume any name. The person that is the National Leader of Boko Haram has just adopted the name Abubakar Shekau."

Nigerian authorities also said today that its security forces are "interacting with experts … all over the world" to find the girls. Yet they remained unable to say how many girls were missing: "The federal government is setting up a committee" to find out the number, said one official in Abuja, Mike Omeri.

Read more from CSMonitor, first published there on may 12: http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2014/0512/Boko-Haram-leader-Shekau-is-dead-say-Nigeria-officials-as-nation-rolls-its-eyes-video