By Mohammad Tijjani
Nigerian Air Force (NAF) has commenced the training of a special squad to protect its formations from terrorists’ attacks nationwide.
The Chief of Air Staff, Air Mashall Sadiq Abubakar, told journalists on Wednesday after a joint exercise by NAF Special Squad and the British Military Assistance Team (BMATT) which held in Kaduna.
NAF had on June 5 flagged-off a six weeks training for 300 personnel, who were selected to form the nucleus of its Base Protection Squad.
He said that the joint training with BMATT was to build the capacity of its personnel in line with best military tradition.
Abubakar said the collaboration was also aimed at ensuring that the personnel have the required expertise to protect critical assets in all NAF formations in the country.
“You could recall that in 2013 one of our bases was attacked in Maiduguri, we don’t want that kind of situation.
“That is why in the last two years we are building capacity in this area to ensure we protect our bases and also ensure that the assets entrusted in our hands are well protected, so that the asset can be used to protect Nigeria,’’ the air chief said.
He restated the commitment of the service to protect the territorial integrity of Nigeria and called for more support from the civil populace to end activities of terrorists.
“The territorial integrity of Nigeria is something we are working to make sure we protect.
“Yes, there were quite a number of suicide attacks, but I can tell you we are working with other services to checkmate such attacks.’’
Abubakar said, however, that in checkmating the attacks, communities have a responsibility of passing intelligence information to the security agencies.
“It is only when we have useful intelligence information that such attacks will be contained,’’ he said.
Abubakar noted that although communities in the north-east were helping with such information, a lot still needed to be done to checkmate terrorists’ activities in the country. (NAN)
