By Sumaila Ogbaje, NAN
The Chief of the Air Staff (CAS), Air Marshal Hasan Abubakar, says the Nigerian Air Force (NAF) has become a force to reckon with among comity of nations in its 60 years of existence.
Abubakar communicated this at the Interdenominational Church Service as part of activities lineup for the 60th Anniversary Celebration of the NAF on Sunday in Abuja.
He was represented by the Chief of Policy and Plans (NAF) AVM Sayo Olatunde.
He said the NAF, which started from a very humble beginning, had become one of the top air forces on the African continent.
Abubakar reiterated the commitment of the service towards addressing the myriads of security challenges confronting the nation.
“We are doing everything possible to make sure that we resolve the insecurity challenges confronting the country as soon as possible and we are making great successes, remarkable achievements in that aspect.
“We are actually making progress just for some few things that prevented the impact of our successes for being seen and being felt by the country.
“I am sure those things should be resolved and then we begin to have peace in this country.
“In the area of operation, we are making remarkable successes and we are also making sure that we are doing a lot of things to enhance our operational efficiencies.
“Recently, we have this capability assessment that review what we need holistically to fight current official warfare so that we can make the best use of the resources available, the resources graciously given by the federal government.’’
The CAS said the NAF continued to make frantic efforts to improve on welfare of its personnel and the families of fallen heroes through several projects and initiatives.
He listed some of the welfare programmes to payment of monthly relief package for personnel on flight lieutenant and below to cushion the impact of the current economic situation in the country.
According to him, he has instituted an insurance that will cater for illness and accidents, in addition to what is obtainable from the Ministry of Defense level as part of efforts to cater for the welfare of personnel.
The air chief said the recruitment process had been sanitised to ensure that only the best were taken.
“We have made serious effort to make sure we enhance the process so that the people will recruit into the Nigerian air force will be people who are truly interested in job.
“And one of the steps we took was to train our recruitment officers to be able to determine those people, who are with drugs; who have ulterior motive for wanting to come to the service.
“From the process of screening we just started that 100 per cent of the efforts are just betrayed at Kaduna airport based communities.
“Another step we take to enhance the quality of personnel coming into the air force is to make sure we do screening, a computer screening test even before we call them for interview.
“When you apply, you do the screening; so that we know them in terms of quality of people.
“All these things we put in place to make sure that the process is fair, firm, and qualitative and we expect quality outputs,” he said.
The Chairman organising Committee, AVM Michael Ekwueme, called on Nigerians to pray for the service in its operational engagement and the success of the occasion.
“Let us continue to thank God and pray for the success of the event; foreign participants have started arriving; let us pray for the safety of those on their way” he said.
The Director, Chaplaincy (Protestant), NAF, Air Commodore Dogo Gani, said the church service was organised to thank God for protection and commit the future of NAF into God’s hand.
Gani said the NAF also solicited for prayers of the men of God to continue to pray for the service and charged all members of the armed forces to always look up to God in all their dealings.
According to him, his sermon is centered on the need for strategic partnership with God for greater success.
“First and foremost, we must know who we are in partnership with and above all look unto the Lord who is the author and finisher as well as the greater person that can give us victory over every human aid,” he said.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the service was attended by Principal Staff of Officers from NAF Headquarters, their spouses and other senior officers as well as airmen and airwomen. (NAN)