Nigeria’s military has sacked the commander leading the fight against militant Islamist group Boko Haram.<\/p>\n
His redeployment to an unspecified post follows a string of attacks by the insurgents, including the killing of at least 50 people in a mosque last month.<\/p>\n
No official reason was given for Maj Gen Ibrahim Attahiru’s removal.<\/p>\n
Army chief Gen Tukur Buratai gave him a deadline in July to deliver Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau dead or alive within 40 days.<\/p>\n
At least 20,000 people have been killed and thousands more abducted since Boko Haram launched its insurgency in north-eastern Nigeria in 2009.<\/p>\n
President Muhammadu Buhari took office in May 2015 with a pledge to beat back the militants.<\/p>\n
About seven months later, he declared that Boko Haram had been “technically defeated” after the army recaptured most territory that had fallen to it.<\/p>\n
However, Boko Haram has continued carrying out bomb and gun attacks in the north-east.<\/p>\n
In July, more than 40 people died during a military operation to free people who had been ambushed in a convoy by the militants.<\/p>\n
The dead included soldiers and an oil exploration team.<\/p>\n
Maj Gen Attahiru Ibrahim was appointed to lead the offensive against Boko Haram in the north-east in May this year.<\/p>\n
He has been replaced with another general, Nicholas Rogers, who led a special military and police force to tackle ethnic clashes in the volatile central region.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nigeria’s military has sacked the commander leading the fight against militant Islamist group Boko Haram. His redeployment to an unspecified post follows a string of attacks by the insurgents, including the killing of at least 50 people in a mosque last month. No official reason was given for Maj Gen Ibrahim Attahiru’s removal. Army chief […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":381038,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[5225],"class_list":["post-381024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","tag-boko-haram"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=381024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381024\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/381038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=381024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=381024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=381024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}