Buhari, newly appointed army chief pay working visit to Maiduguri

President Muhammadu Buhari and his newly appointed army chief paid a day's working visit to police, special forces and troops in Nigeria’s north-east on Thursday.

In Maiduguri, Borno state, Nigerian authorities are waging an operation against radical Islamist group Boko Haram.

President Buhari's visit was to assess the security situation here, according to local media report.

He said that he was excited to see a level of cooperation between the agencies in their quest to defeat terrorist groups.

"By pulling together the collective resources and comparative advantages of the Armed Forces and other security agencies, we hope the enemy will now feel the ferocity of our firepower and the weight of our resolve", Buhari said.

The Nigerian president’s trip to Maiduguri was also to commission some projects. Local media said they include a 4,000 housing units for displaced persons out of a 10,000 housing units being put up by the Federal Government in Borno and the Senate building of Borno State University in Maiduguri.

Other projects to be commissioned are the Borno State Vocational Enterprising Institute, Muna, Government Day Technical Secondary School, Njimtilo, Dr. Babagana Wakilbe Memorial School, Abbaganaram Maternal Healthcare Centre and the Jiddari-Polo road and drainage system,.

Nigeria's military is fighting a decade-long jihadist insurgency in the northeast, kidnap gangs in the northwest and separatist violence in the southeast.