This is a guest post by Alex Thurston. Alex is the author of  Salafism in Nigeria: Islam, Preaching, and Politics, and is an assistant professor at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Ser…

While at prayer on April 13, 2007, the prominent Salafi scholar, Shaikh Jaafar Mahmud Adam, was assassinated at his mosque in Kano. At the time, the murder made a deep impression on mainstream Muslims, many of whom revered Adam. The murder took place in the final days before the 2007 presidential elections, and many observers, including those at the U.S. embassy, thought that the murder was somehow related. But it now seems more likely that Adam was assassinated by a vengeful former member of the Nigerian Taliban. His murder was an early manifestation of the deadly battles among Boko Haram’s competing factions that continue up to the present.

Abdulbasit Kassim, leading Boko Haram scholar, recently discovered a thirty-eight-minute recording of a purported Islamic State in West Africa (ISWA) communique. I translated it from the original Kanuri. It provides a particular version and explanation of ISWA's immediate history, and sheds light on why the group executed Mamman Nur, one of the Boko Haram’s founding fathers and an influential ideologue, its internal decision-making, and ISWA’s relationship with the Islamic State (IS). It is not clear, however, the extent to which what is described in the audio is true to what actually happened. 

Nigerian Major General Ibrahim Manu Yusuf, commander of the Multinational Joint Task Force (MJTF) fighting the Boko Haram Islamist insurgency in the Lake Chad Basin, announced that 109 Boko Haram fighters and their prisoners had defected in Cameroon.

Pointblank News is reporting that the U.S. Departments of State and Justice are investigating Sabiu 'Tunde' Yusuf, Sarki Abba, Mamman Daura, Ismaila Isa Funtua, and his son Abubakar Funtua for money …