In a video making the rounds on Twitter last year, Deby was captured disclosing that Boko Haram’s factional leader, Abubakar Shekau, had narrowly escaped in the town of Dikoa.
He goes on to advise Shekau to surrender or be killed inside his Dikoa hideout.
“Abubakar Shekau was lucky, he was at Dikoa during the attack. He fled from Dikoa but we know where he is,” the president stressed during a state broadcast.
The Boko Haram group is one of Africa’s deadliest along with Somalia’s Al-Shabaab and Al-Qaeda in the Sahel region.
Although birthed in northern Nigeria’s Borno State, the Boko Haram insurgency has taken a regional dimension with the group launching attacks across the Lake Chad region which borders Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad.