Abubakar Shekau is the leader of the cut-thoat Islamist group Boko Haram... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality...
, which has carried out a series of deadly attacks across northern Nigeria. Abdullahi Tasiu Abubakar from the BBC Hausa service looks at Nigeria's most wanted man.
The leader of the cut-thoat Islamist group Boko Haram is said to be a fearless loner, a complex, paradoxical man -- part intellectual, part gangster.
Fondly called imam or leader by his followers, Abubakar Muhammad Shekau was born in Shekau village in Nigeria's north-eastern state of Yobe.
Some say he is 34 or 35, others that he may be 43 -- the uncertainty adds to the myths surrounding Nigeria's most wanted man.