Nigeria: Farouk Yahaya new Chief of Army Staff

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has appointed Major General Farouk Yahaya as the new Chief of Army Staff following the death of Ibrahim Attahiru, who died on 21 May 2021 in Kaduna in a military plane crash. Farouk was a general officer of the Nigerian Army commanding the Military Counter Terrorism and Counter Insurgency Battalion in the North Eastern part of Nigeria.

President Muhammadu Buhari, the supreme commander of the army, has found a successor to Ibrahim Attahiru, who died on May 21, 2021 in Kaduna in a military plane crash. The announcement was made this Thursday morning by the Ministry of Defence. He is Major General Farouk Yahaya. Prior to his appointment, Farouk Yahaya was the General Officer Commanding the 1st Division of the Nigerian Army and also the Commander of the Military Counter Insurgency and Counter Terrorism Battalion for the North East, codenamed Operation HADIN KAI.

The appointment of Major General Farouk Yahaya comes about a week after the death of the former Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General Ibrahim Attahiru, and 10 people died in a military plane crash in Kaduna. « The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, President Muhammadu Buhari, has appointed Major General Farouk Yahaya as the new Chief of Army Staff, » according to a statement by the Acting Director of Defence Information, Brigadier General Onyema Nwachukwu.

The Nigerian army faces several challenges, including the insurgency led by the terrorist group Boko Haram and its offshoot, the Islamic State of West Africa province, which has displaced about 2 million people and killed more than 30,000 since 2009. The troops are also fighting armed gangs in the northwest, who kidnap for ransom.