A senior Nigerian military officer was killed Thursday during a terrorist raid on a base in the country’s northeast, marking the second loss of a Brigadier General in just five months.
According to local government officials and intelligence sources, the overnight assault on the Benisheikh base—located roughly 75 kilometers from Maiduguri—left at least 18 soldiers dead and several military vehicles destroyed.
The attack underscores the persistent volatility in Africa’s most populous nation, which has struggled to contain a 17-year insurgency.
Since the 2009 Boko Haram uprising, the conflict has evolved into a complex regional threat involving powerful splinter groups such as the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP).
“Unfortunately, the brigade commander, Brigadier General O.O. Braimah, lost his life,” Kaga Local Government Chairman Zannah Lawan Ajimi said in a phone interview.
His death follows the killing of Brigadier General Musa Uba by ISWAP in November. He was the highest-ranking military official to die in the long-running conflict since 2021.
“They overran the brigade,” one of the intelligence sources said, giving the death toll as “at least” 18.
The second intelligence source said that “the terrorists killed several troops” and “burnt vehicles and buildings before they withdrew,” without giving a toll.
The army and Nigeria’s Defence Headquarters did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Borno capital Maiduguri has seen two suicide bombings since December the type of bloody, urban attacks reminiscent of the insurgency’s peak a decade ago.
On Wednesday, the US State Department said in a notice it was authorising “non-emergency US government employees” to leave Abuja “due to the deteriorating security situation”.
While the insurgency is concentrated in the northeastern countryside, terrorists from Nigeria and the neighbouring Sahel have made inroads western Nigeria, where organised crime gangs known as “bandits” have been raiding villages and extorting farmers and artisanal miners for years.
Gunmen killed at least 90 people across several remote villages in northwest Nigeria this week, according to an AFP tally of tolls given by local and humanitarian sources.
Among the attacks was an assault in Kebbi state that police blamed a local terrorist group known as Mahmuda, which is affiliated with Al-Qaeda.
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