Chief of Air Staff (CAS) Air Marshal Sadique Abubakar, weekend, disclosed that his agenda for the Air Force is to have a highly professional service that respects the rights of everyone and can deliver in their constitutional duties.
Speaking during his familiarization tour of the Logistics Command and some other units in Lagos, Abubakar said that the military is currently restrategizing its tactics in the war against insurgency in the North-East.
“We are identifying those strategies that we need to discard that are not working for us, especially with regards to how we are operating in the North-East.
“With what I have seen, I am very happy with the situation on ground. We have identified areas that we need to improve upon and we will go ahead to start doing something about it.
“We have our airplanes that are patrolling the Nigerian-Cameroonian border particularly at all times and we have intercepted quite a number of people that are smuggling petroleum products to support the insurgents and we have engaged them on a number of occasions.”
Speaking further, the CAS faulted those who claimed that the military was not winning the war against insurgency. “I don’t want to say we are not winning this war. I think we are,” he said. “What we are simply doing now is to re-strategize. We are going through all the activities that have happened in the past and the idea there is to re-evaluate these ideas and see the ones we need to improve upon.
“That is why I am going on the tour. We started with about 16 operational units that are directly involved in the war in the North-East but we also recognize that without logistics you cannot fight war.
“We need the logistics support to carry out our operations. So what I have seen on ground is highly committed personnel that are working to ensure that whatever logistics support we need to execute the war in the North East is given to us.
“We need to have a highly professional service that is prudent in management of resources, a service that is highly disciplined and have innovative ideas.
“We are working on welfare programmes from accommodation, medical services for our personnel and the children of our personnel too.”
“My next move therefore is to reposition the Air Force so that we can have a highly professional service that respects the rights of everyone and can deliver in their constitutional duties.”
Air Marshal Abubakar also said the Nigerian Air Force plans to acquire new platforms, as well as refurbish the moribund ones.
According to him, “One of our platforms is moving out of Lagos to Yola by next week and quite a number of our helicopters are moving from Port Harcourt to Yola too.
“Of course, there are a number of platforms we want to acquire which we are forwarding to the Federal Government.
“We are not ill-equipped rather we do not have all that we need to have and we are working to improve on the serviceability of the platforms we have.
“We have been achieving and working closely with the Nigerian Army using the platforms that we have. They might not be adequate quite alright, but we are making the best out of what we have on ground and its producing results,” Abubakar said.
