New Chief Of Army Staff, Ibrahim Attahiru Sacked In 2017 For Failing To Defeat Boko Haram

Ibrahim Attahiru, the new chief of army staff, COAS was sacked in 2017 as theater commander of the joint task force (JTF) in the fight against Boko Haram.

At the time, his redeployment to an unspecified post follows a string of attacks by the insurgents.

The recently sacked Army chief Gen Tukur Buratai had given Attahiru a deadline to deliver Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau dead or alive within 40 days, which he failed to achieve.

A senior military source, however revealed that Buratai set Attahiru up to fail as JTF theatre commander when word got to him that Attahiru was being considered to replace him, as early as 2017, TheCable reports.

The politics of replacement may have gone on for three to four years, but Attahiru has now been named the new chief of army staff.

In June 2017, barely a month after Attahiru took over, Boko Haram insurgents attacked Maiduguri, the Borno state capital.

The month after, a group of geologists and technologists from the University of Maiduguri were ambushed by Boko Haram insurgents at Magumeri area of Borno state.

About 12 soldiers who escorted the academics were reportedly killed. Some members of staff of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) on the team were also killed in the brutal ambush.

Months after the army chief had ordered the capture of Shekau, the sect, using four female suicide bombers, attacked Muna Gari, a suburb of Maiduguri, killing about 14 persons.

In December 2017, six months after he was appointed, Attahiru was removed and deployed replaced by Rogers Nicholas, a major general who was in charge of logistics at the army headquarters.