Chief of Air Staff Air Vice Marshal AVM Sadique Abubakar on Wednesday said that the Nigerian Air Force (NAF), has successfully launched six different operation strategies to tackle insecurity and other forms of criminality in the different parts of the country.
AVM Abubakar stated this at an interactive meeting of the NAF management team with members of the House of Representatives Committee on Air Force in Abuja.
The NAF boss disclosed that the agency was saddled with the responsibility of national security and was at a point grappling with a serious threat to national security by bandits and criminals in Nigeria.
He explained that in the last five years, the agency had done everything possible to protect Nigerian citizens and also protect the territorial integrity of the nation against any for the form of aggression
According to the Air Chief, NAF launched six different operations to tackle insecurity particularly insurgency and banditry in the North-East state of Borno and some few other Northern States of the Federation
He listed the different operations as follows: Operation Lafia Dole, Safe Heaven, Thunder Strike, Hadarin Daji, Swift Response, and Delta Safe.
Speaking on the achievements of the agency, he said that it had successfully evacuated stranded Nigerians from crisis-prone areas in Cameroun and also have sent relief materials to victims of a similar crisis in Malawi, Gambia other African nations.
He further informed the lawmakers that NAF had expended 64,964,000 hours to tackle these security challenges adding that it expended 924,000 hours in the North-East region alone.
The NAF boss commended the lawmakers in both the Senate and House of Representatives for passing the Air Force Institute of Technology Establishment Bill into law saying that it would help in its operations as well as capacity building.
Chairman of the House Committee Hon. Shehu Koko commended the efforts of the NAF boss and his management team for successfully engaging the first female pilot to fly one of its aircraft in its sixty-five years of operations.
