The Senate of the Abia State University (ABSU) has approved the cancellation and withdrawal of the degree result and certificate awarded to former Governor of the state, Orji Uzor Kalu, for violation of the institution’s academic regulations.

The Senate, in a press statement signed by the University Registrar/Secretary to the Senate, Ernest Onuoha, said the decision of the institution was based on the violation of the Academic Regulations of the university on Admission – by –Transfer, which rendered the offer irregular, ab initio and non –completion of the mandatory six semesters (three academic years of study)

Mr Onuoha said, “On the strength of the findings and recommendations of an investigative panel into allegations of breach of the extant academic regulations of Abia State University, in the admission process of the admission and graduation of Kalu Orji Uzor in the discipline of Government and Public Administration, of matriculation number 00/42226, the Senate of the university at its resumed 69th extra-ordinary meeting of March 1, 2013 and by a vote of 88 against three dissenting voices only, approved the cancellation and withdrawal of the degree, result and certificate awarded to him.

“The decision of Senate was based on the following grounds among others: The violation of the academic regulations of the university on Admission-by-Transfer, which rendered the offer irregular, ab initio and the he non-completion of the mandatory six semesters (i.e. three academic years of study), before he was awarded a degree of the university. He spent only two semesters in all.

“The university Senate maintained that its action, aforesaid, derived from the exercise of its onerous statutory responsibility to guard and maintain , at all times, the academic regulations of the university, its hard-earned reputation and the credibility of the certificates it awards.”

After Mr Kalu had dropped out of the University of Maiduguri, he re-enrolled at the Abia State University while he was governor of the state.

As the visitor to the university at the time and there were allegations that Mr Kalu was an absentee student.

The admission and graduation of Mr Kalu, the university stated, made mockery of its academic rules and regulations.

Kalu’s Response

Reacting to the withdrawal of his Bachelor’s Degree certificate by the Senate of ABSU, Mr Kalu, in a statement signed by his Special Adviser, Oyekunle Oyewumi, said the recent move by Governor Theodore Orji of Abia to revoke his Bachelor’s degrees certificate is just the latest in the failed attempts to silence him.

He said that Governor Orji’s intimidation of the Senate of ABSU to purportedly withdraw his certificate does not invalidate the authenticity of the certificate.

Mr. Kalu said the move has put to test the pedigree of the men and women who make up the Senate of the university, the credibility of the certificate issued by the school and brought to fore the warped nature of the Governor.

The statement reads, “What the Senate of ABSU has done amounts to shifting the goal post after the goal has been scored.

“No one can deny the fact that His Excellency (Kalu) was in ABSU for lectures and examinations.

“And how do you withdraw a degree that has been duly awarded? To think it is the same Senate that awarded it that is withdrawing it. It is obvious where the drummer is playing for the Senate to dance from.

“Must the academic community allow politics and politicians to influence its decision? Our answer is no.

“We definitely will react appropriately to this issue of the withdrawal of a certificate issued alongside those of other students of the institution.”

The statement added that the state governor has further ridiculed himself in the eyes of right thinking members of the society.

“First, the recent moves to discredit Kalu, was the threat to set up a panel of enquiry to probe Dr. Kalu based on a kangaroo report that the tenure of His Excellency was fraught with mismanagement of the state’s resources.

“Till date, despite all the grandstanding by a man who believes he is an emperor but by all standards a weakling, nothing has been heard of that panel.

“After all, he claimed nothing, not even the law courts, can stop him from probing the eight years of Dr. Kalu in government.

“And to think he was an integral part of that government as the Chief of Staff. “Who can be closer to the chief executive of a state than his personal physician and chief of staff?

“Then followed the attempt to prevent Dr. Kalu from returning to the PDP. “It appears that Orji has a very short memory.

“How can he so quickly forget the political staying power of Dr. Kalu, which earned him (Orji) the governorship despite the fact he was in the custody of the EFCC when the election was held and a new party had to be registered for him to emerge as the governor of Abia State.

“That same staying power, which only God and forthrightness can grant, is what has kept Dr. Kalu above all foes.

“And if Orji still thinks it is possible for him to run Dr. Kalu out of Abia State, then he should have a rethink. Recent events have shown who truly is an Abian among Dr. Kalu and Orji.

“This non-performing governor is challenged to a public walk alongside Dr. Kalu on the streets of Abia State and let us see who will get stoned.

“At least, we have been able to count not less than three occasions when he was stoned by the people of the state despite his huge security apparatus, a situation that did not obtain under Dr. Kalu as the state governor.

“Even now that the man who wants to turn himself into a demigod has declared Dr. Kalu a persona non grata, the former governor still walks the streets of Abia State without a retinue of security details and yet receives standing ovation everywhere he goes.”

Source: Channelstv

Ex- Director of mobilization and contact, Movement for the Actualization of Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), Chief Sam Ike has condemned the Federal Government’s plans to celebrate the nation’s centenary next year, describing it as unnecessary.

In a chat with journalists, Ike who is the leader of United Eastern Congress, said the centenary celebration was unnecessary since the amalgamation was not in the interest of people of the South East and South South geo-political zones.

“We are against the amalgamation and by extension the centenary celebration because it was done for the administrative convenience of the colonial masters and not for Nigeria’s development,” Ike said.

He lamented that since the amalgamation was done, the Igbos have been on the receiving end in so many fronts, stressing that the present situation of things in the country does not call for celebrations.

“What are we celebrating? Since the so called amalgamation, the Igbos have been suffering in Nigeria in terms of killings, marginalization and all what not, so what are we celebrating? The funds which has been mapped out for this celebrations can be used to provide the much needed infrastructure in the country, ” he lamented.

It would be recalled that the federal government had set up a committee headed by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Senator Anyim Pius Anyim to plan for the nation’s celebration of 100 years of the amalgamation of the southern and northern protectorates in 1914, which holds in 2014.

Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State has congratulated the President of the Nigerian Guild of Editors, Mr Femi Adeshina, saying he will bring a breath of fresh air to the Guild.

In a statement by his Chief Press Secretary, Mr Peter Okhiria, Oshiomhole said “your election to lead the elite group of Nigeria Editors is well deserved as you have proved beyond reasonable doubt that you  have the capacity to lead the Guild.

“I recall my encounter with you at the Nigerian Editors Conference in Benin City in 2011, where you displayed intrinsic intellect, and with your election, I have no doubt in my mind that the Guild is in safe hands.

“Following the remarkable achievements recorded by your predecessor, Mr. Gbenga Adefaye, I’m sure you will bring on board a breath of fresh air and build on the successes on ground.

“While I commend the Nigerian Guild of Editors for the rancor-free process which produced the new leaders, I plead with the new President to be magnanimous in victory and work closely with all to make the Guild even stronger.”

Nigerian readers will need no recap to understand what Boko Haram stands for. It is a phenomenon that trails the daily lives of individuals like a psychological shadow stretching over the entire country from Maiduguri. Yet for the sake of non-Nigerians it will suffice to explain that Boko Haram is a northern Nigerian group of jihadist militants whose violent campaign with heavy assault weapons came to public attention on July 26, 2009 with a raging attack on a police station in Bauchi, northern Nigeria. The violence which spread one day later, to other northern cities namely Maiduguri, Potiskum and Wudil with attacks on police stations and destruction of public properties culminated in the arrest of the group’s leader. He was eventually killed in police custody under extremely questionable extra-judicial circumstances resulting in the interim reinstatement of law and order. It all happened in 2009.

Further trouble brewed however in the wake of the power tussle that followed the incapacitation and eventual demise of Nigeria’s President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua in 2010. The ethnic and regional balance of power that political forces sought to foster on the nation by advocating the formula of the cyclical rotation of the Presidency suffered a huge blow with the death of the president. The contentious issue of the northern domination of political leadership since the attainment of independence in 1960 had long been a thorn in the flesh of southern politicians who felt marginalized by the northern domination of the military and political institutions that held the scepter of power.

The solution seemed found on June 12, 1993 when a western Nigerian Moshood Abiola of controversial political antecedents was presumed duly elected as President in a presumed free and fair election. The controversial background of this ticking political time bomb made the victor an unacceptable thorn in the flesh of powerful northern elites who ensured the annulment of that election without much ado. A complicated political chess game that ensued in the aftermath of the annulled election culminated in the questionable death of prominent political figures including a dictator and Moshood Abiola himself. Attempts to calm frail nerves saw the engineered re-emergence of the former military Head of State General Olusegun Obasanjo as President of Nigeria from 1999 to 2007 because Gnereal Obasanjo belonged to the same ethnic group as Moshood Abiola’s. Obasanjo’s largely successful efforts to re-organize and overhaul the entire system with a view to breaking the logjam of dominance of the military and political leadership by the northern elites stands in fact, at the heart of all disputes between the North and the rest of Nigeria today.

Sharp-tongued critics suspect that General Obasanjo who rebelled against his northern sponsors and sidelined them in active manipulations, had deliberately hand-picked a terminally ill successor to feign the transfer of power back to the north even though he knew that the Southern Vice President would automatically take the reins of power if the terminally ill northern President died mid-term. And so it happened.

The bitterness that trailed this feeling of perceived treachery and dirty tricks was poised against a feeling of “serves them right” by southern agitators who saw nothing wrong in short-changing the northern interest even if it meant a breach of moral commitments made within the ruling party. A choice had to be made between moral commitment and constitutional guaranties. While the rest of Nigeria stuck with the provisions of the constitution that guarantied succession by a Vice President (no matter his region of origin) when a President dies, leading Northerners sought to short-change the constitution in favor of intra-party arrangements to advance the morally agreed principle of rotation.

An acrimonious war of attrition ensued with opponents entrenched in overtly irreconcilable camps. Vitriolic charges began to thunder loud. Accusations and counter-accusations made the round. Several voices from the north threatened Sodom and Gomorra if the North failed to get its way. The language of violence was a matter of course. The paraphrase “He who makes peaceful change impossible renders violent change inevitable” symbolically summarized the prevailing northern anger and sentiments.

When the southern agitators finally prevailed in the aftermath of all the wrangling and manipulations, the sudden resurgence of Boko Haram that was presumed curtailed in 2009 with the killing of its leader fitted perfectly well into the picture of threats made in the run-up to the Battle Royale.

There was no question in the south as to who was behind the bloodshed that befell arbitrary targets and almost sought to spark a civil war. Defenseless citizens were killed and maimed in arbitrary attacks on bars, pubs, schools, churches and seldom mosques within the confines of northern Nigeria. This gave rise to the suspicion of aspirations to establish an Islamic state. Most often however, police stations and military installations were attacked, the highlight being the successful daring attack on the police headquarters in which the national police boss escaped death by the whiskers. It took an international dimension when the office of the United Nations also got bombed. It bore the hallmark of organized terrorism with mounting sophistication as time passed by. It became clear latest at this point that the work of the group was driven by a well organized network of insiders and widespread support of highly placed and ordinary people.

The helplessness of the institutions of state to contain the situation was highlighted when the President finally cried out asking citizens to pray for the nation. He observed that the network of the terror group spreads through all segments of society – the paramilitary forces, the army, the legislature, the judiciary and even his own cabinet. Of course when the President talked, it was assumed that he had credible intelligence report at his disposal. He seemed to have feared that he too would soon become a target of the assailants. Not long after however, the same President declared confidently that the institutions of the state had worked out a master plan to contain the menace and even specified a deadline for the eradication of the lethal movement.

Soon after, a legislator was identified as a collaborator and subjected to prosecution. Till the present moment however, the President’s new-found courage in declaring the impending end of Boko Haram did not materialize in the identification of the cabinet members that the President knew to be members of the deadly jihadist sect.

In other words, the picture that meets the eye as time passes by, seems less clear-cut. The battle line now seems getting blurred and invisible. The more you look is the less you see.

My interaction with ordinary northerners who themselves resent Boko Haram and have very little in common with fanatical Islamism has now forced me to ask for answers to countless mind-boggling questions.

Is Boko Haram today still the Boko Haram of 2011 that sought to make Nigeria ungovernable for a Southern President? Have the institutions of state being badly compromised to shift goalposts in desperate midnight diplomacies? Many weird developments through the months now seem to signal a clandestine metamorphosis into a paradigm shift. The political atmosphere today is one, in which a Northern Bamakur Tukur has become the advocate-in-chief of a second presidential term for a Southern President Jonathan who only in 2011 was a factor that unified all northern foes to fight a common battle against the south.

The Joint Task Force (JTF) comprising combat-ready soldiers and law enforcement agents that was formed to address the combat end of the confrontation now seems to have transformed into the Boko Haram movement itself. I was forced to swallow my words in a recent intellectual exchange with a group of Northerners from Maiduguri who I accused of being too sentimental for blaming the JTF for high-handedness. After all, the ordinary folks will not provide information on suspicious activities of terrorists in their neighborhood. The answer I got shocked me. These friends painted a picture of ordinary folks coerced into sympathizing with Boko Haram. They reported widespread rejection of the terror group after so much bloodshed. They intimated me with stories of families that have been eliminated shortly after they passed on information to JTF of Boko Haram activities in their neighborhood. Someone was reportedly shot after he had informed the JTF of a terror kingpin in his vicinity. This did not surprise me as a Southerner since we in the south also witness similar situations when the police is offered information on the whereabouts of robbers and kidnappers. At the end of the day, more ordinary folks are driven into the waiting hands of Boko Haram for safety and security since the JTF cannot be trusted.

What I found disturbing however is that no single information of this sort has ever found its way into popular Nigerian news outlets. Many consumers of information are largely unaware of this development. Indeed the wanton elimination and destruction of entire neighborhoods after a Boko Haram attack has been launched from a single spot often lead people to question the motives of the JTF. While this can yet be attributed to the presence of bad eggs within the JTF, the next example proves to be even more mind-boggling.

The name Kabiru Sokoto is today, no longer a mystery to Nigerians. It is the name of an alleged Boko Haram unit leader who was arrested and reportedly escaped police custody in dubious circumstances. Investigations further revealed that a Police Commissioner named Zakari Biu played a major role in facilitating his escape on January 18, 2012. He was eventually recaptured on February 10, 2012 and remanded in custody. Today more than one year after his re-arrest, no single information is available on the progress of prosecution or his whereabouts. Grapevine gossips that we are unable to verify now contend however that Kabiru Sokoto has long been secretly airlifted out of Nigeria and now enjoys a peaceful life either in Dubai or Malaysia. While the rumoring of a serious information of this sort cannot be guarantied to be true or false, it is the direct impact of the actions of a government that refuses to provide information to its people and clad itself in dubious secrecy.

Commissioner of Police Zakari Biu was arrested in the course of investigations and released 9 months later in November 2012, according to sources “on the orders of President Jonathan”. In an intricate web of political intrigues, the media implicated the then Police Boss Hafiz Ringim in the exposure of Zakari Biu for career convenience. Till the present moment, no further information was released on Zakari Biu and the extent of his involvement in Boko Haram. The investigation report on which basis President Jonathan ordered his release was never made public. It therefore beats the imagination, what the President knows, how much he has tolerated or is tolerating or indeed if the President is under some quiet coercion or promoting a different agenda altogether. Why was the release of a terror suspect ordered by a President and not by a judge?

In fact, one of my northern friends in this informal exchange took it one step further and opines that the political Boko Haram that sought to make Nigeria ungovernable for President Jonathan shortly after the presidential election of 2011 may have long fizzled out. In his belief, what we have today is most likely to be a stage-managed Boko Haram exploited by the government for undisclosed political reasons.

To support his point, he drew my attention to the case of the Boko Haram’s self-styled spiritual leader Abubakar Shekau who was reportedly shot in crossfire during a routine checkpoint interception. While some members of his entourage were killed, he was said to have escaped with two other persons after sustaining gunshot wounds. My friend raises questions on the feasibility of a successful escape to Mali from such a hotspot given the countless number of JTF checkpoints on this route. In fact, he does not rule out the fact that Shekau may have been deliberately airlifted to safety. I had no answer to his question on how the Nigerian government suddenly discovered the whereabouts of Shekau in Mali and did not know where the man had been in Nigeria all the preceding months.

In the absence of a clear positioning of government with defined and easily comprehensible policies on matters of national importance, rumors and insinuations of this sort will continue to shape the beliefs and convictions of local folks. It is yet a mystery today, what strategy the government of President Jonathan is pursuing in combating Boko Haram with such mysterious shielding of several identified and hinted perpetrators. Above all else, the nation is never offered progress reports to address the fears and apprehensions of the citizens. In its stead, the President’s spokesmen concentrate resources almost exclusively on the abuse, denigration, disparaging and discrediting of anyone who dares to criticize the administration.

Where will this lead the government in the public desire to know the real game being played behind the Boko Haram label?

The military said Sunday that it killed 20 Boko Haram Islamists while repelling an attack by the extremist group in the embattled northeastern state of Borno.

“Boko Haram terrorists attempted to attack a military barracks (in Borno) at about 5:00 am (0400 GMT),” spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Sagir Musa said in a statement.

He said the attack occurred in the village of Monguno, about 200 kilometres (124 miles) from Borno’s restive capital of Maiduguri, considered Boko Haram’s home base where the radical group has been blamed for scores of deadly attacks.

The raid on the military barracks “was repelled,” Musa said. “The encounter led to the deaths of 20 Boko Haram terrorists.” He made no mention of military casualties.

Musa said the gunmen, armed with Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, had stormed the military site in three 4X4 trucks and eight motorcycles.

Separately, two militants linked to a series of explosions in Maiduguri that injured four people last week have been arrested by the military, he added.Boko Haram’s insurgency is estimated to have left 3,000 people dead since 2009, including killings by the security forces.

The Islamists have said they are fighting to create an Islamic state in Nigeria’s mainly Muslim north, but their demands have repeatedly shifted.

A video posted on YouTube last month featured gunmen claiming to be from Boko Haram who said they abducted a French family of seven from a Cameroon nature park near the Nigerian border.

The video marked a departure for the Islamist group, which had never before claimed the kidnapping of a Westerner and some have questioned whether the Nigerian Islamists did in fact carry out the abductions.

France has said that Boko Haram was responsible for the attack and are likely holding the family members, including four children, in Nigeria.

Boko Haram is believed to include a number of factions with varying degrees of coordination, and some criminal groups are suspected of carrying out attacks under the guise of belonging to the movement.

The main faction of the Islamist militia is thought to be led by Abubakar Shekau, who was designated a global terrorist by the United States last year.

Several experts have cast doubt on the suggestion that Shekau’s faction was directly involved in the kidnapping of the French family.

Boko Haram has rarely attacked foreign targets, with most of its violence directed at Nigeria’s security services, politicians and other symbols of authority.

Churches have also been repeatedly targeted in the country roughly divided between a mainly Muslim north and mostly Christian south.

Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country and top oil producer, which has also seen waves of violence by militants and gangs in the oil-rich south.

Source: AFP

Delta State Governor, Dr Emmanuel Uduaghan has expressed happiness with Friday’s election of Mr. Femi Adesina, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of The Sun Newspapers as President of the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE), succeeding Mr. Gbenga Adefaye who served out the two term limit prescribed by the constitution of the guild.

In a statement by Felix Ofou, his Press Secretary, the governor described the election of Adesina as putting “round peg in a round hole”, while also noting that the outcome reflects the confidence and acceptance of the celebrated columnist by editors all over the country.

He said: “It is with great joy that I received the news of the election of Mr Femi Adesina as the new President of the Nigerian Guild of Editors to take over from my good friend and brother, Mr. Gbenga Adefaye who I believe served the guild meritoriously. There is no doubt that Nigerian editors have put a round peg in a round hole”.

Governor Uduaghan in particular, praised the NGE for conducting an election of new officers to run the guild devoid of any acrimony or division, stressing that the editors, by this feat have shown the way for other groups and people to follow, while adding that this would further enhance the image of the guild.

He wished the new executive a successful tenure and expressed the hope that the NGE would help to stamp out quackery from the journalism profession as well as ensure that journalists are paid regular wages, quite unlike the case where several media houses owe their staff for months.

The governor restated his commitment to host the next conference, while noting that Asaba, the Delta capital, and the entire state was waiting with heart’s breath to welcome the editors as well as showcase the landmarks of the administration in the last six years.

• Attributes Rumours To Lack Of Education, Idleness

Bayelsa State Governor, Hon. Seriake Dickson says the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP was being repackaged for efficiency, cohesion and unity to enable it play its leading role in the affairs of the country.

Governor Dickson made this remark, while fielding questions from Government House correspondents shortly on arrival from Abuja, where he was part of current efforts at repositioning the ruling PDP for maximum results.

Assuring the supporters of the party in the state that all is well, he also reacted to rumours making the rounds in the state about his office; describing the rumours as baseless and attributed the development to lack of education and idleness.

Governor Dickson noted that his administration’s major focus was in the area of education and by the time the policies in the sector take root and jobs are created for the many jobless youths, the problem would be minimized.

He restated his administration’s commitment to tackle the myriad of developmental challenges facing the State and called on Bayelsans to remain steadfast in their prayers for the administration.

Governor Dickson later inspected a guard of honour mounted by a detachment of the Nigeria Police, Bayelsa State Command at the Government House gate, Yenagoa.

On hand to receive the Governor were the State Deputy Governor, Rtd Rear Admiral Gboribiogha John Jonah, Secretary to State Government, Professor Edmund Allison-Oguru, some members of the State Executive Council, the Commissioner of Police, Bayelsa State Command, CP Kings Omire and other top Government functionaries.

(CNN) — One of al Qaeda’s most influential figures in North Africa has been killed by French and Chadian forces, a U.S. official said Friday.

French military sources had earlier said that Abdelhamid Abou Zeid, a deputy leader of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, was killed in an airstrike in Mali late last month.

Abou Zeid was one of the group’s most ruthless commanders, having seized at least a dozen foreigners for ransom. At least two have been killed; several French citizens remain captive.

“He was a senior influential member of AQIM, and his death represents a significant blow to AQIM’s efforts to use West Africa, and Mali in particular, as a safe haven,” the official told CNN.

His death was first reported by an Algerian television station Ennahar.

A spokesman for the French Defense Ministry refused to comment on the reports.

The ministry did say air force operations are continuing, including in the Tessalit region, where close to 100 air sorties were carried out this week.

Aguelhok is a remote town close to mountains and the Algerian border — in a region where many Islamist fighters had regrouped in the face of the French push toward the main cities of the north.

According to analysts, it is an area that Abou Zeid was intimately familiar with, as for years it was his main base of operations before Islamists took over much of northern Mali.

For much of the last year, a constellation of jihadist forces including Abou Zeid had controlled large parts of northern Mali after ethnic Tuareg rebels had forced the army to retreat. He spent much of his time in and around Timbuktu, partly at a luxurious mansion that had been built for Moammar Gadhafi, according to reports from the city.

At the beginning of this year, Abou Zeid joined other Islamist forces making a push southward toward the capital, Bamako. But when the Islamist advances prompted a French intervention, he moved to the area around the less accessible city of Kidal, close to the virtually impenetrable Ifoghas Mountains.

Abou Zeid had been promoted by the emir of AQIM — and fellow Algerian — Abdelmalek Droukdel. Droukdel saw him as a loyal counter to the growing power of a rival jihadist commander, Moktar Belmoktar, the man who ordered the hostage attack on the Algerian gas plant in January.

Abou Zeid’s ruthlessness — and his growing influence — were confirmed three years ago when he ordered the beheading of an elderly British tourist — Edwin Dyer — who’d been seized by his group early in 2009. When Malian authorities rounded up a number of al Qaeda suspects in response, Abou Zeid sent a hit squad to the Timbuktu home of a senior intelligence officer, who was shot dead.

The following year, a French aid worker, 78-year old Michel Germaneau, was killed as French commandos tried to rescue him. Abou Zeid’s group also staged a raid on a uranium mine in neighboring Niger — abducting seven workers, four of whom, all French, are still being held.

One of the few Westerners to have encountered Abou Zeid was a French citizen, Pierre Camatte, who was abducted from a hotel in northern Mali in November 2009.

“Physically, there is nothing remarkable about Abou Zeid,” he told Le Monde’s Isabelle Mandraud after his release. “He is small, and thin. But he seems to be highly respected by members of his entourage.”

“He wanted to know whether I knew of any mapping websites on the Internet, Russian websites, so that he could have real-time images.”

Abou Zeid’s hostage-taking provoked a trial of strength with Belmoktar, who had generated significant funds for jihad from ransom payments for foreign hostages.

By all accounts, the two were very different characters. Abou Zeid had a reputation for extreme brutality and thuggishness, while Belmoktar developed a reputation for strategic cunning. Analysts tell CNN that despite their rivarly, the two men found ways to coexist.

The fall of Gadhafi in Libya gave both men the opportunity to take their operations northward into Libya from their sub-Saharan strongholds. Sources briefed by Western intelligence told CNN that Belmoktar and Abou Zeid made trips to Libya to explore the possibility of cooperation with local Libyan jihadist groups, secure weapons supplies and scout out possible locations for training facilities.

Abou Zeid made several trips to Libya in 2011, according to one source familiar with intelligence from the area.

He was one of several al Qaeda figures in North Africa who had fought in Algeria’s vicious insurgency in the 1990s, when whole villages were massacred and atrocities were committed by both Islamist militants and Algeria’s counterterrorism forces.

As a child growing up in a poor region of southern Algeria, Abou Zeid had little formal schooling, but his intimate knowledge of the border with Libya made him an expert smuggler.

According to Dario Cristiani, writing in the Jamestown Foundation’s Militant Leadership Monitor, he was radicalized by several run-ins with the Algerian authorities. And he was at the heart of the transformation of the Algerian insurgency into an al Qaeda affiliate.

Abou Zeid’s death casts further uncertainty over the fate of the French hostages his group is still believed to hold.

In December, before the French intervention in Mali, he accused the French authorities of blocking negotiations for their safe release. Several of the hostages had appeared in videos warning against military intervention for the sake of their own safety. In one video, with masked men holding AK-47s behind them, the men look exhausted and terrified.

Andrew Lebovich, a Senegal-based analyst who recently traveled to Mali, told CNN there is concern that Abou Zeid transported a number of Western hostages with him after he left Timbuktu.

If Abou Zeid was indeed killed, the expectation is his group will retaliate.

“According to available accounts, he was somebody who generated fierce respect and loyalty in his men, so unless his fighting force has been severely degraded, there’s a chance his group may lash out to avenge his death in the days and weeks ahead,” Lebovich said.