Boko Haram's Shekau says election won't hold in Nigeria

Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau vowed to disrupt Nigeria’s general election in a new video released Tuesday, after two suicide attacks in the northeast blamed on the Islamists killed 38 people, AFP reports.

“This election will not hold even if we are dead. Even if we are not alive Allah will never allow you to do it,” Shekau said in what appeared to be the first video released by the group on Twitter, a sign of its changing media tactics.
He also claimed a weekend attack in the northeast Nigerian city of Gombe, which the military says was repelled. 

The Islamist leader, declared a global terrorist by the United States and sanctioned by the United Nations, disputed the military’s account of the Gombe clashes, claiming that his fighters overran troops and freed insurgents from prison.

Despite Shekau’s threat, experts doubt that the Islamist rebels have the capacity to disrupt voting nationwide, although election officials have conceded that voting could prove impossible in parts of the northeast.