Chief of Air Force, Air Marshal Alex Badeh, says the force has joined the Navy and other security agencies in the war to eradicate oil theft in the country.
Badeh told our correspondent after assessing the NAF's formations, including its mobility command in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, on Monday, that the decision was in line with the mandate he received from President Goodluck Jonathan.
The President, he said, while decorating him and others as service chiefs had tasked them with national security and oil theft, especially in the Niger Delta.
He said the force would acquire maritime patrol aircraft to collaborate with the Navy in fishing out oil thieves.
He said, “In no distant future, we are going to have our own real maritime patrol aircraft fully operational and in collaboration with the Navy. We will be able to give them a nosebleed.”
On national security, he said the major challenge to security agencies was to be proactive instead of reactionary in their approach to terrorism and other related cases.
He vowed to transform the air force through innovative technology, lamenting that the force's manpower had been allowed to waste for too long.
He said, “My vision for the air force is to make it to be a self-reliant, fighting force through the use of innovative technology. We have a very large pool of manpower; very educated manpower and we have not been able to harness them to do for us what we intended.
“I have put the manpower together and l have given them a charge. When it materialises even the nation will realise that we have achieved something.”
He, however, expressed dissatisfaction with the force's formation in the state, saying it has been having problems of accommodation and offices.
