The Niger army has announced the killing of a senior Boko Haram leader during a targeted operation in the volatile Lake Chad basin, a region that straddles Niger, Nigeria, Chad, and Cameroon and has long been plagued by jihadist violence.
In a statement released Thursday, the army said Bakura, a notorious commander, was eliminated last week during a “surgical operation” on Shilawa Island in Niger’s southeastern Diffa region. The strike was carried out by a fighter jet in the early hours of August 15, with the military describing Bakura as a “feared leader” within the extremist ranks.
“Very early in the morning of August 15, an air force fighter aircraft launched three targeted and successive strikes on the positions Bakura used to occupy in Shilawa,” the statement read.
Bakura, identified by the military as Ibrahim Mahamadu, was about 40 years old and originally from Nigeria. He had been involved in Boko Haram activities for more than 13 years. Following the death of longtime Boko Haram chief Abubakar Shekau during infighting in 2021, Bakura assumed leadership of a splinter faction loyal to Shekau’s vision. Unlike other militants who defected to the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), Bakura resisted integration and relocated with his fighters to the Niger side of Lake Chad.
Boko Haram launched its insurgency in northeast Nigeria in 2009 with the aim of establishing an Islamic caliphate. The conflict has since killed more than 40,000 people and displaced over two million across the Lake Chad basin. Niger first experienced the group’s violence in 2015, when militants struck the border town of Bosso, marking the spread of the insurgency beyond Nigeria.
The killing of Bakura represents a symbolic blow to Boko Haram’s Shekau-loyalist faction, though analysts caution that the group remains fragmented but resilient, continuing to pose a threat across the region.
Niger’s military emphasized that the operation was part of ongoing efforts to secure the Diffa region and to weaken jihadist influence along the country’s porous borders.
