Terrorism Fight – FG Purchases 21 Fighter Jets, 4 War Planes from the Middle East

The danger of terrorism in the country might soon be a thing of the past following the moves being made by the present-day administration to combat the scourge – yesterday 4 war planes arrived Nigeria from Pakistan while 21 fighter planes have already been paid for.

The Federal government, Monday, announced the arrival of four fighter planes into the country – the planes have been purchased in a bid to combat the Boko Haram terrorists in the North-East. The war-planes were bought from Pakistan in the Middle East.

Earlier on, the Federal Government had announced that it had released funds for the purchase of 21 fighter jets. The planes are being purchased by the President Muhammadu Buhari administration in a bid to adequately combat the threat to national peace by Boko Haram and other terrorists in the country.

The war planes purchased from Pakistan has already been handed over to the Nigerian Air force. The 21 fighter planes being expected are to arrive sometime within the first four months of next year. Among these military grade aircraft are four medium airlift utility helicopters, ten primary trainers, three live attack aircraft and four gunship helicopters.

The first four war planes sent to Nigeria by Pakistan are to facilitate the training of the Nigerian Air force personnel before the arrival of the 21-specially-designed fighter planes next year. It was reported that the Pakistani government also sent engineers, pilots and other maintenance crew to help in training the Nigerian Air Force, as well as prepare for the war-aircrafts coming next year.

The planes were handed over to the Nigerian Air Force by the Pakistani Chief of Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sohail Aman.

Receiving the aircrafts on behalf of the Nigerian Air Force, Chief of Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sadiq Abubakar, was quoted as saying:

“I would like to specially thank Mr President for his continues support and consistent commitment to the development of the Nigerian Armed Forces.

”I want to put it on record today that the Nigerian Air Force has fared well since Mr. President’s assumption of leadership as our Commander-In-Chief. As a result, the Nigerian Air Force is now strategically positioned into our highly disciplined and professional force through capacity building initiative for effective and efficient employment of firepower in response to Nigerian national security challenges but has also initiated the procurement of new modern platform to boost its capabilities and the resolve to tackle Nigeria’s security challenges.

“The Nigerian Air Force has made tremendous improvement in terms of reactivation, training and enhancement of the welfare of its personnel.

“In the area of platform reactivation, the Nigerian Air Force has restored 15 air planes and helicopters into flying status in the last 17 months.

“Efforts are also at advanced stage to reactivate four additional air planes that will be deployed very soon for operations.

“It is our hope that by the first quarter of 2017, the Nigerian Air Force would have 21 additional new platforms in its fleet.

“We are highly delighted of this development because the last time the Nigerian Air Force was given this number of platforms at a time was in the early 1980s”.

Hopefully,  with the purchase of these new state-of-the-art fighter aircrafts, Nigeria can finally crush the dare-devil menace of Islamic insurgency.

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