US President Donald Trump has sacked Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, replacing him with the director of the CIA, Mike Pompeo.
Thanking Mr Tillerson for his service on Twitter, Mr Trump said the new state secretary would do “a fantastic job”.
Mike Pompeo, Director of the CIA, will become our new Secretary of State. He will do a fantastic job! Thank you to Rex Tillerson for his service! Gina Haspel will become the new Director of the CIA, and the first woman so chosen. Congratulations to all!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 13, 2018
Tillerson, a former chief executive of ExxonMobil, was only appointed to the job just over a year ago.
He was last seen on Monday boarding his plane home to the United States after a tour of Africa which concluded in Abuja, where he met with President Muhammadu Buhari.
Tillerson had been on a five-country tour of east and west Africa but was forced to cut short his visit “due to demands in (his) schedule”, the State Department said.
After stops in Ethiopia, Djibouti and Kenya, which were overshadowed by Trump’s surprise announcement on talks with North Korea, he squeezed visits to Chad and Nigeria into just one day.
