The chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen Tukur Buratai and his Air Force counterpart, Sadiq Abubakar has been ordered by Nigeria’s Acting President, Prof Yemi Osinbajo to relocate to Maiduguri, the Bornu State Capital and epicenter of the war against Boko Haram insurgents.
The order for the immediate relocation of the Military Chiefs came at the end of Osinbajo’s meeting with service chiefs in Abuja Thursday evening.
Osinbajo said there was a need for them to be at the military command control center in the hotbed of insurgency.
Apart from Buratai and Abubakar, those who attended the meeting were Mansur Dan-Ali, minister of defence; Gabriel Olonisakin, chief of defence staff and Ekwe Ite-Ibas, chief of naval staff.
Speaking with state house correspondents at the end of the meeting, the minister of defence said: “We just finished a meeting with the acting president and the three service chiefs. We agreed that they should move back to the command center again and see what are the things happening there.
“We have also agreed that we should get more surveillance devices, cameras that will be able to see distant attackers coming to the position of our troops.
“Also, the period of the raining season is a difficult moment for us. We cannot dominate the environment like what we do during the dry season but efforts are geared towards regaining our areas. All these ambushes that are happening would be stopped.”
The Bornu state capital has come under increased Boko Haram attacks in recent months, the latest being the abduction of oil workers in the Chad basin and some staff of the University of Maiduguri.
Even though the workers were eventually rescued last night, it proved a costly operation as the Army lost many soldiers in the operation.