By Musdapha Ilo, Maiduguri

The Nigerian Army has said that the Boko Haram sect will be defeated soon in spite of the pledge of allegiance by the insurgency group’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, to the terrorist organisation, Islamic State, ISIS.

The assurance was given on Sunday by the a acting director, Army Public Relations, Sani Usman, a Colonel, in an interview on Hausa service of the British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC,  monitored in Maiduguri.

Usman said that the Boko Haram leader’s pledge of allegiance to ISIS was an act of desperation aimed at securing external aid in the face of certain defeat in the hands of the Nigerian Army.

The army spokesman also allayed fears that the development might lead to renewed reign of terror by the insurgents, assuring that the military was in control of the situation.

“With or without allegiance to IS, the days of Shekau are already been numbered, because all the insurgents’ training camps and hideouts in the affected Northeast, are destroyed, while the terrorists have been routed from their camps and hideouts; and those who have escaped our ‘condone and search operations’ in the Sambisa Forest and the Lake Chad Basin Areas, are on the run; abandoning their operational vehicles, arms and ammunitions,” Usman stated.

Continuing, the army spokesman said that “Shekau’s public allegiance to IS, clearly indicates that he may surrender or be killed in the ongoing joint military operations of Nigeria and three neighbouring countries of Chad, Cameroon and Niger,”