Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Adesola Amosu, has said the pilots of the Nigerian Air Force have displayed a commendable degree of courage by defying gunshot wounds to carry out aerial bombardments of insurgents hideouts in the North-East.
Amosu said this during the winging ceremony of 15 fighter pilots of the Nigerian Air Force in Abuja on Tuesday.
He charged the new pilots to emulate the outstanding exploits of their counterparts involved in the counter terrorism and counter insurgency operations in the North-East.
The Air Chief described the pilots, waging the aerial component of the campaign against Boko Haram as daring, bold and intelligent.
He noted that the new pilots were left with no other option than to display the set qualities of their senior colleagues having been winged at a time the nation was faced with a challenge to tame the threat of terrorism in the North-East.
Amosu stressed that in spite of the fact that the Alpha jet pilots and their F7 counterparts sustain regular injuries during operations, it had not deterred them from going for air missions designed to dislodge the terrorists.
He said the Air Force and indeed the country were expecting the winged pilots to perform their duties in the North-East in accordance with the nation’s expectations, which had spent so much to train them.
The Air chief added, “You will therefore be required to bring your training to bear as you put in your utmost best in responding to calls of duty at all times.
“Let me quickly remind you that you have come to join a crop of pilots that have intimidating CVs.
“The pilots you are coming to meet today are very courageous, very intelligent, very bold and very daring. So, we don’t expect anything short of these attributes.
“We expect you to be very bold; we expect you to remain knowledgeable, and we expect you to be courageous.
“You have come to meet us at a time when we are fighting insurgency. Let me quickly remind you that those pilots you see out there, the Alpha Jet pilots, the F7 pilots, regularly come back with bullet wounds.
“This is not to scare you, but to tell you how courageous your predecessors are, regularly they get gunshot wounds and they still go back to the forest.”
