Gift Samuel, The Sight News
Abuja-The Nigerian Air Force(NAF)for the first time in its history on Wednesday winged two (2) female officers as qualified pilots along side nine(9) male others, leading to a total of 11 officers.
The two female officers who are; Flying Officers OS Ijelu and GC Nwaogwugwu were winged alongside nine (9) other male Flying Officers after embarking on a one-year training programme in Westline Aviation South Africa where they qualified as pilots.
In his remarks, the Chief Of Air Staff(CAS), Air Marshal Sadique Abubakar urged the winged officers to be prepared for the onerous task ahead of them as they fit into the operational flying environment.
The CAS however noted that Air assets alone without adequately trained pilots cannot enable Nigerian Air Force to effectively discharge its Constitutional responsibility which has led the NAF to embark on human capacity development in all NAF Specialties.
Advicing the winged pilots, the CAS said, “For you the journey to fruitful flying careers has just begun and you must not rest on your oars. You must open your minds to learn and be mentored by your captains and seniors in the field. Flying Operations requires a lot of discipline, hard work and diligence to make you succeed. Therefore, do not forget the 3 Ds to success, which are “Drive, Discipline and Desire to be better every day”.
“As you are being inducted as pilots at a period Nigerian Air Force platforms are actively engaged in flying activities, you must therefore key into the progressive treads of the Service and be ready for duty wherever and whenever you are called to defend our national sovereignty and those values we hold dear” he noted.
He further said that additional 10 pilots from International Aviation College in Ilorin and 4 pilots from South Africa will complete their training in February 2018, adding that the NAF would have successfully winged 72 pilots by the end of February.
“Furthermore, there are an additional 74 pilots that are training to qualify for awards of NAF wings. Out of this number 64 are training in Nigeria while the remaining 10 are training outside Nigeria. In the area of Instructor Pilot Training, the NAF has trained 23 Instructor Pilots in the last 2 years while 7 are currently undergoing training abroad with 3 in US and 4 in Jordan” he said.
While appreciating President Muhammadu Buhari for giving the NAF an enabling environment, he also appreciated Westline Aviation South Africa through whom the training was accomplished and reassured Nigerians that the Nigerian Air Force remains fully committed to the successful execution of its constitutional roles and will continue to meet its statutory responsibility of defending the territorial integrity of the nation.
In his welcome address, the Chief of Training and Operations, Air Vice Marshal Nurudeen Balogun noted that statistics have shown that on virtually all areas of NAF specialties, more personnel have trained in the last two and a half years than the previous six years combined.
He further stressed that the service has never witnessed this high volume of training since its inception.
The 11 pilots winged commenced their training at Westline Aviation, South Africa on 16th January 2017 and completed the flying training on 16th December 2017.
The officers completed the flying training with an average of about 210 hours each.
