LAGOS, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- Nigeria's security chiefs on Tuesday were relocated to the stronghold of Boko Haram insurgents in restive northeastern Borno State as directed by the Acting President Yemi Osinbajo, a military officer has said.
Maj.-Gen. Ibrahim Attahiru, the Theater Commander, Operation Lafiya Dole, told reporters in northeast Maiduguri that Lt.-Gen. Tukur Burutai, the country's Chief of Army Staff and Chief of the Air Staff, Air Marshal Saddiq Abubakar, arrived at the Command and Control Center.
"Right now, we will be having an interactive session with the Service Chiefs where they will be briefed about the ongoing operation," Attahiru said.
He said their relocation to Maiduguri was imperative toward achieving the overall objectives of the counter-insurgency operation.
He said the Chief of Defense Staff, Gen. Gabriel Olonisakin, and other heads of military commands would also be attending the meeting.
Minister of Defense, Mansur Dan-Ali, had told reporters in Abuja, the nation's capital that the nation's Service Chiefs are to move back to command center of the ongoing war against Boko Haram insurgency with a view to consolidating the gains being recorded in the battle fields.
Dan-Ali reassured that all these ambushes that are happening regularly would be stopped.
Suspected members of the Boko Haram sect have intensified their deadly activities in Borno in recent times.
Th suspected insurgents last Tuesday attacked a convoy of oil workers at a village along Gubio and Magumeri local government areas.
The attackers ambushed the oil workers, who were staff of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), traveling in a convoy of about 10 vehicles.
The oil workers were engaged in oil exploration in the Lake Chad Basin.
Troops on Sunday recovered 21 additional bodies of an oil exploration crew, who were ambushed by a terror group in the country's northeast.
Boko Haram is blamed for the deaths of more than 20,000 people and displacing of 2.3 million others in Nigeria since their attacks started in 2009.
