The Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Olusola Amosu on Friday assured that the Nigeria Air force through adhering to a strict maintenance culture would provide safe platforms for flying.
Amosu spoke to journalists on the sidelines after decorating 35 Group Captain to the rank of Air Commodores at the Airforce headquarters in Abuja.
He said: “Today is a day of mixed celebrations while we are still mourning the death of our colleagues that lost their lives during the unfortunate helicopter accidents, equally we have to consider elevating very senior officers so that we can continue to render service to the nation.”
Amosu explained that: “When it comes to air craft the issue of age, you can think about it but what you must focus on is service ability status. You could have an aircraft: the B52 today how old? But it is still being effectively utilized for war.”
“It’s your maintenance schedule, maintenance culture, if you give it the best of maintenance, sometimes an air craft that is even 20 years old can be even air worthy than the ones that are just about two years old,” he added.
Amosu stated that based on the culture that have been developed over the years: “ we are to provide very safe plat form for flying, we are very cautious of the need to be efficient, even in terms of delivering air power to support our ground forces.
He said the Airforce is focused on the need to enhance airlift capability; the effort is to ensure that the C130 fleet came up with the G222, noting that there has been a lot of huge efforts on tactical transportation.
He also charged the newly promoted one star general to discourage complacency and mediocrity among their subordinates.
Amosu noted that the innovation contributed by the crop of promoted officers gave the opportunity to use MIG-21 weapons on helicopters.
He further commended the promoted officers for their innovation in the maintenance of the Falcon 900 which came back within a very short period of time and recently some of those capabilities were extended to KW09 helicopter and within two weeks the helicopters were flying.
Amuso said: “This set of officers once you properly harness the human resources could take the Air-force to a height of unprecedented capabilities.
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