Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Tukur Buratai, currently visiting troops in towns and villages recently liberated from terrorists in Borno State, narrowly missed an ambush that killed one soldier and wounded two.
The ambushed advance team nonetheless gunned down five insurgents and arrested five on Friday’s drive down the most dangerous stretch of road in Nigeria, from Maiduguri, the northeastern city where Nigeria’s Islamic uprising was born, northeast to Ngala, on the Cameroon border.
The 140-kilometer (90-mile) ride took four hours with stops, including for soldiers to check for land mines.
An AP reporter in the 20-vehicle convoy drove past burned-out vehicles littering the road until recently controlled by the Islamic extremists. Weeds have overtaken villages once thriving with farmers and cattle herders.
Buratai stopped at Mafa to tell troops of the 112 Battalion to “keep on with the good job” of forcing out the insurgents and urging them on because “there is more work to be done.”
A few kilometres down the road, soldiers with binoculars spotted insurgents hiding in a herd of cattle. Buratai called the convoy to a halt and soldiers arrested the militants, who confessed to have ambushed the advance team.
Buratai ordered the body of the dead soldier and his two wounded comrades be conveyed to the nearest hospital.
Nigeria’s military has said it has been plagued by leaked information from Boko Haram sympathizers in its ranks.
Corruption has robbed soldiers of pay and equipment, a problem the President Muhammadu Buhari has promised to remedy.
