Nigeria’s Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Sadiq Abubakar, has revealed how members of dreaded Boko Haram terrorist sect shot their jet, but ended up paying a bigger price following their reinforcement which degraded their fighters.
Air Marshal Abubakar, who made this known in a recent interview with the Voice of Nigeria in Abuja, said that war can be tragic as well as dangerous.
Recounting the sad experience in Borno State, the Air Chief said, “In the Air Force we have had situations where for instance, we went to conduct medical outreach for Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs in Gwoza and we picked all our medical personnel with the medications and so on, we were flying from Maiduguri to Gwoza and our aircraft was shot at.
“Ah.., the bullet pierced through but fortunately for us, nobody was really killed eeehm, one of the passengers was wounded and the air craft also continued its flight ahh, but there and then we made sure that those that fired that round would not be there to fire anybody again, because we called in our fight aircraft from Yola immediately and they were able to handle the situation on ground,” Abubakar said.
He noted that war is risky giving the fact that you will be aiming at your enemy while he is also trying to destroy you.
“Well, yes a number of times of course if you are fighting war, war is very tragic and very, very dangerous venture which we all know. You are going to kill the enemy the enemy is equally coming out to kill you.”
Continuing, Abubakar, who attributed their war success to God, lamented how they ejected some pilots due to bullet wounds with one dying which made them to be missing in action.
“Ahhm, we have had cases where they attempted to fire at us, they fired at the air craft, but God has been in control of us and in some incidents in 2015 or 2014, where some of our pilots ejected because they were shot at and unfortunately, we lost one and is still missing in action up to now.
“Apart from that, I think basically, we had a few problems but not directly as a result of enemy action. So I think God has been very kind to us.” (Peoples Daily)