'We want to kill Boko Haram': Nigerians welcome new army chiefs

Residents of an internally displaced camp in the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri have welcomed President Muhammadu Buhari's decision to replace the country's top military commanders as security issues mount.

"To be sincere, the outgoing service chiefs have tried their best but in some instances their best isn't enough at all, despite the fact that we are not security experts, but we know that they have failed." said Ummate Abubakar, an internally displaced person from the village of Monguno.

The Boko Haram insurgency and its deadly affiliate, the Islamic State in West Africa, has killed some 36,000 people and displaced millions since it waged its war for a caliphate in the northeast in 2009.

The group controlled vast swathes of the region in 2015 but were pushed back.

But Boko Haram still conducts deadly attacks and ambushes on civilians and the military.

"What we want is not to repel the Boko Haram but to kill them, not to repel them but to kill them, to finish them at once, not to repel them again," said Sunday Ishaya, an internally displaced person from the village of Monguno.

"We are repeating what all the time we do, that is the reason why we are not after them. We want somebody that will just degrade them, complete them, wipe them away."

Nigeria also faces criminal gangs in the northwest, who were blamed by authorities for the kidnapping of some 300 schoolboys in December.

While in the central regions farmers clash with cattle herders.