The army is in retreat before the Islamist insurgents. Corruption, indifference and a lack of resources are blamed
Speaking to journalists on 7 February, the army's theatre commander for north-eastern Nigeria, Major-General Olusegun Adeniyi, repeated the government's frequent assertion that Boko Haram has been defeated. Yet barely a month earlier, the general's own convoy was attacked by the Islamist insurgents on the main road out of Maiduguri, the isolated capital of war-torn Borno State. On 9 February, a group of civilians was obliged to spend the night in their cars and trucks by Auno, 15 miles west of Maiduguri, because the army had closed the road to the state capital. Boko Haram came in the early hours and slaughtered 30 of them before driving off with the women and children they had captured.
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