Service chiefs storm Maiduguri to review operations

From Musa Umar Bologi and Sadiq Abubakar, Maiduguri Service Chiefs yesterday held a four-hour meeting to review strategic directive and operational plan, due to renewed terrorists attack in the Northeast. The meeting had the Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Abayomi Olonisakin, Chief of Army Staff, Lt.-Gen. Tukur Buratai, Chief of the Air Staff, Air Marshal Sadique Abubakar, and the representative of the Chief of Naval Staff in attendance. The Service Chiefs’ visit and their meeting at the Command and Control centre of Operation Lafiya Dole was in compliance with Presidential directive that the service chiefs should relocate to the Maiduguri to personally coordinate the operation. Blueprint reports that the directive by the Acting President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, came after Boko Haram terrorists ambushed some oil workers from University of Maiduguri and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation on research on oil exploration along Chad Basin. Briefing journalists after the meeting, the Director of Defence Information, Maj.- Gen. John Enenche, said the movement of the service chiefs would give impetus to the military operations in the North-east. Enenche said with the directive the service chiefs “will spend more operational time in Maiduguri, while still attending to other matters in their headquarters.” He urged the public to furnish the military with information on “terrorists’ sleeping cell locations, terrorists’ concentration area and outpost locations, collaborators and informants to the terrorists, suspicious habitations and living quarters within rural and urban centre, and suspicious isolated settlement and camps outside normal living area.”