The JTF declared Abubakar Shekau, the assumed leader of Boko Haram wanted with a reward of N50 million for his capture and on June 3, the United States announced a U.S. $7 million reward for Shekau’s location.
The State Department of the United States has warned U.S. citizens not to travel to Abia, Akwa Ibom, Bauchi, Bayelsa, Delta, Edo, Gombe, Imo, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Niger, Plateau, Rivers, Sokoto and Zamfara.
The State Department warned U.S citizens to avoid these states, because of the recurrent risks of kidnappings, armed robberies and other armed attacks now randomly reported in most parts of Africa's most populous nation with a high rate of unemployment from a rapidly growing population of youths.
Most of the governors have failed to maintain law and order in their states with armed gangs terrorizing harmless people and assassinating enemies of rival cults and opposing political parties plagued by rampant corrupt practices and gangsterism of the kleptomaniacs and cultists in both the ruling party and the opposition.
The state of emergency declared by President Goodluck Jonathan in the three northern states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe on May 14, 2013 has failed to stop the incessant terrorist attacks of Boko Haram and raids by rampaging Hausa-Fulani herdsmen trespassing lands in the Middle Belt and other states both in the north and south of the country worsening the security challenges of the Joint Task Force (JTF) of the Nigerian Armed Forces at war with insurgents in the north and also tackling the menace of terrorist militants in the Niger Delta who also operate as pirates in the Gulf of Guinea engaged in illegal oil refineries and export from stolen crude oil.
The U.S State Department said:
“Officials must receive advance clearance by the U.S. Mission for any travel deemed as mission-essential.’’
On June 3, the United States announced a U.S. $7 million reward for Shekau’s location. According to a report by John Campbell posted on the website of the Council On Foreign Relations on
June 4, 2013, this amount is "more money than for Mokhtar Belmokhtar or Oumar Ould Hamaha, whose respective groups, “Signatories in Blood” and Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa, jointly claimed responsibility for attacks in Arlit and Agadez, Niger on May 23. There are also rumors in Nigeria that the United States is seeking to eliminate Shekau in a drone strike from its new base in Niger. Meanwhile, Boko Haram members carried out an attack on prison guards in Niamey, Niger on June 2, but failed to escape."
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