President Muhammadu Buhari bypassed no fewer than 24 top senior Nigerian Army officers to appoint Major-General Farouk Yahaya as the Chief of the Army Staff, according to a document, Seniority Roll Nigerian Army Officers 2021 (Revised) obtained by SaharaReporters on Friday. Military sources said Buhari might have appointed a less qualified Yahaya, from Sokoto State, based on the president’s usual ethnic and religious sentiments as seen in his other various appointments. Checks by SaharaReporters on the army’s document showed that most of the officers in line of seniority following the late Chief of Army Staff, Lt Gen Ibrahim Attahiru, are from the South-West, South-East or Christians. The new army chief, Yahaya, now 55 years old, was taken by the Nigerian Army Infantry Corps on September 22, 1990. In 2018, former President Olusegun Obasanjo wrote an open letter to Buhari, asking him not to bother to seek re-election.