Air Force Boss Explains Why It Took Nigerian Military Five Years To contain Boko Haram

The Chief of Air Staff (CAS), Air Vice Marshal Adesola Amosu, has explained why it took the Nigerian military so long to overcome the Islamic extremists, Boko Haram insurgents.

The Air Force boss explained that before the postponement of the 2015 general elections, the military did not deploy the use of technology to battle the insurgents.

Amosu made this explanation yesterday during a press conference to mark the 51st anniversary of the Nigerian Air Force.

He disclosed that the introduction of technology to the war and the assistance of Pakistan, Ukraine and South Africa turned the war in favour of the Nigerian military.

“The extension that we got for the elections was to essentially take advantage of two situations. We have been discussing with our neighbours in trying to secure their support; we got the support in principle just before the election was postponed. Again, we got increased supply of equipment that we needed for fighting.”

Added to the above, he asserted, was the military’s introduction of technological tools to its campaign.

“When I talk of technology, there is what we call Network Enabled Technology (NET). What are the advantages of having network enabled capabilities? We have some limited capability in regard to that. We have the beach craft; it is able to give us effective down streaming so we can actually see the battle, and that’s exactly what we are doing most of the time.

“The Network Enabling Technology is going to really change a lot of things in the Nigerian Air Force. About 10 days ago, when we saw the population coming out of Sambisa Forest, no matter how good your surveillance is, surprises will show up. I personally was surprised to see that population coming out from the forest. But if you have technology, you would have noticed that this population was right there in the forest.

“But when you have the technology, you don’t need to have this sustained long operation; we would have been able to identify the gathering over a period of time and would have been able to bring the operation to its conclusion,” Amosu said.

He said the support was mainly in the provision of training and expendables.