Nigerian Air Force Wings Another Female Combat Pilot, 5 Others

The Nigerian Air Force (NAF) on Tuesday, winged a female combat pilot officer, and five others.

Chief of Air Staff (CAS), Sadique Abubakar, winged them at the combined ceremony of Basic Flying Course 19 Batch A and Tactical Fighter Course 24 Batch B, at NAF Headquarters, Abuja.

He assured that NAF would continue to ensure capacity building in order to effectively safeguard the country.

Abubakar decorated four pilots with their basic pilot wings on completion of their Basic Flying Course.

He also bestowed the award of Combat Rating to operational pilots who have completed the Tactical Flying Course on the Alpha Jet aircraft.

“Human capacity development is one of the key drivers of the service vision and has indeed received much attention. This is evident in the number of personnel that has been trained in various courses, both locally and overseas,” he said.

The graduation brings the total number of new pilots winged from 2015 to 118.

In July, Flying Officer, Tolulope Arotile, Nigeria’s first female combat pilot, died on Air Force base in Kaduna.

NAF said she was “inadvertently hit” by a former schoolmate when the car was in reverse mode.