ISWAP’s rapid rise, defying the military of Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon is still poorly understood. Know why? Because it makes no sense. It defies logic. Boko Haram was on the verge of collapse. factions were killing each other. Fighters were surrendering en mass.
Suddenly we hear on TV ISIS now has a foothold in West Africa. How? In June 2014, when Abu Bakr al Baghdadi declared a caliphate in the Levant, jihadist camps in Nigeria were abuzz with the news. Abubakar Shekau declared his own caliphate two months later in August.
At first communications challenge. This was when the Nigeria media was not in the business of broadcasting terrorist propaganda. Boko Haram lacked a stable internet connection. At that point, ISIS began giving Shekau advice on how to manage its communications, suggesting that it
use the messaging app Telegram, popular among jihadists due to heavy encryption instead of WhatsApp. So Boko Haram and ISIS began exchanged audios, videos, photos and documents about recent battles, internal organisation on a daily basis.
The back andforth was probably monitored by the CIA, because it was reported that Information gleamed from this back and forth chatter allowed the US to track him down and kill him in 2016 in an air strike in Syria.