Charity Nwakaudu Abuja

 

The Chief of the Air Staff (CAS), Air Marshal Sadique Abubakar has stated that the two helicopter gunships ordered from Italy by the Nigerian authorities to tackle armed bandits in the North West, as well as other forms of criminalities across the country would be delivered to the Nigerian Air Force in December 2019.

 

Air Marshal Abubakar stated this in his opening remarks at the 3rd quarterly Chief of the Air Staff conference 2019 held in Abuja.

 

He said at present, the Nigerian Air Force can boast of 73 percent of serviceable aircrafts, adding that the in-country reactivation of C130 aircraft in collaboration with Pakistani experts have reached an advanced stage.

 

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He added that the Nigerian Air Force is also awaiting the delivery of a multi-role attack aircraft – JF 17 Thunder from Pakistan, that two senior officers of the Nigerian Air Force are currently in the United State of America to monitor stages of production of the Super Tucano fighter aircraft billed to the delivered to the Nigerian military in 2020

 

He said: “The CAS Conference is a quarterly meeting with the Branch Chiefs, Air Officer Commanding (AOC) from the 6 NAF Commands, Directors, Commanders and Air Vice Marshals (AVMs) in Abuja.

 

“It is organised quarterly to review the progress made in the previous quarter and afford the NAF leadership the opportunity to critically assess the performance of the service in the past few months and subsequently strategise to evolve innovative ideas to build on existing achievements. It equally provides an avenue to obtain feedback from various field commanders while also keeping them abreast of the policy direction of the HQ NAF in the months ahead.”

 

He further confirmed that the agency will never cease to improve the welfare of NAF personnel and their families and its currently recruiting medical personnel to improve the health directorate of the service to fill the identified gaps.