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By Philip Nwosu
Nigerian Air Force yesterday said despite pockets of attacks by insurgents, the military has substantially dealt with Boko Haram as they can no longer operate as a group.
Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Sadique Abubakar, stated this when he declared open the 2017 African Partnership Flight in Lagos and noted that the defeat of the insurgents was obvious.
The NAF chief also revealed that within the last five years, the fight against the insurgent had swelled the number of displaced persons to about two million, insisting that it was the rise on the population of the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) that propelled the force to build a hospital for the displaced persons in the North-East.
His words: “We are all aware of the current Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria has resulted in over two million IDPs who are in dire need of one basic need or the other.
“It is for this reason that NAF has embarked on several humanitarian programmes aimed at alleviating their plight.
“Worthy of mention is the establishment of the NAF emergency hospitals at Bama and Dalori, where free medical care is provided in addition to regular medical outreach programmers in the various IDPs’ camps in the North-East.
“For example the NAF just concluded a free surgical intervention programme in the area during which 201 IDPs were operated on.”
Abubakar said the African Partnership Fligh was held to enhance regional cooperation, increase interoperability and build capacity, adding that NAF partnered their United States of America counterpart and three other African nations.
