By Baron Ike
Responding to Acting President Yemi Osinbajo’s earlier directive to relocate to Maiduguri, Borno State to give the Boko Haram insurgents a closer mark, military chiefs in Nigeria on Tuesday, August 1 arrived Maiduguri in keeping to the directive from above.
The service chiefs led by the Chief of Defence Staff, Gabriel Olonisakin, a general, arrived the air force base in Maiduguri at about 11 a.m.
Other members of the team include Chief of Army Staff, Lt General Tukur Buratai, and his colleague from the Air Force and the Navy.
On arrival, they immediately drove in a heavy convoy of armed soldiers to the headquarters of Military Command and Control Centre where the Theatre Commander is expected to brief them.
During a close-door meeting with the military chiefs last week to review the security situation in the country and particularly in the northeast in the wake of recent resurgence of attacks, Osinbajo gave them marching order to tame the tide.
Apart from last week’s ambush and abduction of a team of geologists from the University of Maiduguri, Boko Haram insurgents had carried out about 90 separate or multiple suicide attacks within and around Maiduguri in the past four months, according to Premiun Times.
At the headquarters of the Military Command and Control Centre in Maiduguri, Borno State they held a four-hour meeting with the commanders of the ongoing counter insurgency war in the country’s northeast.
The military officials who would be visiting Yobe State on Wednesday, August 2 said the presidential directive did not imply they should completely move their offices to the north-east.
Reporters were excused out of the briefing hall shortly after the service chiefs arrived the Theatre Command headquarters.
The meeting which commenced at about 11.45 a.m. dragged on till about 4 p.m.
At the end of the meeting, all the service chiefs in attendance avoided contact with journalists.
The spokesperson of the Defence Headquarters, Major General John Enenche, who spoke to newsmen at the event gave some insight into what the presidential directive entails.
Said Enenche: “In operations like this, it is a normal thing to have the forward headquarters and then the main headquarters,” he said.
“The service chiefs are not only service chiefs to this area alone but service chiefs of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. What that means is that more professional time would be given to the theatre. Here remains their ‘forward headquarters’ while the ‘main headquarters’ still remains so that they can run the entire armed forces on an equal basis.
“There are about 14 security operations across Nigeria and the service chiefs must still look at those operations. But more focus would be on the northeast.”
Enenche said the service chiefs brainstormed on the “received strategic direction and operational plans” which he said was expected to “give impetus to the military effort in the northeast operation.”
He said the service chiefs had in their overall appraisal observed the need for the members of the public to be more proactive in giving information to the military on any identified activities of Boko Haram.
He said some of the key information the military chiefs felt the troops need to succeed comprise: information on “terrorist sleeper cell, terrorist concentration areas and outpost location, collaborators and informants to the terrorists, suspicious habitation and living quarters within rural and urban centres, and suspicious isolated settlements and camps outside normal living quarters.”
On the 40-day ultimatum given by Buratai for the troop commanders in the northeast to fish out Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, Enenche said it still remains valid.
.Additional report from Premiun Times