Race To Replace Late Army Chief Begins

The race for the replacement of the late Chief of Army Staff, Lt.-Gen. Ibrahim Attahiru, has started 48 hours after his death.

Attahiru and others died in a plane crash involving a Nigerian Air Force aircraft in Kaduna on Friday and were buried on Saturday.

Few hours after the burial, there were insinuations that Maj.-Gen. Danjuma Ali-Keffi, the General Officer Commanding (GOC) 1 Division Nigerian Army, Kaduna, had been penned down for the job.

However, checks by Daily Trust showed that Ali-Keffi is not among the most senior military officers in the operation of the Nigerian Army.

Findings reveal that there are more than 30 senior Major Generals who are superior to him.

A source said President Muhammadu Buhari is considering a senior officer from the South-East to correct alleged imbalance in the composition of his security team.

But the source noted that with the increasing agitation and attacks on security agents and formations by the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), the thinking is that it is too dangerous to give the South-East such a position.

Security experts, who spoke to Daily Trust on Sunday, said Attahiru ought to be replaced as soon as possible in order to sustain the tempo of counter-terrorism in the Northeast and boost the morale of frontline troops.

But a senior officer at Defence headquarters told one of Daily Trust correspondents that it was too early to be talking about COAS replacement as the nation is still mourning late Attahiru.

-Dailytrust