By Philip Dzeremo
Makurdi – The Nigeria Air force War College, Makurdi, has inducted 19 senior officers comprising 16 Wing Commanders, 2 Navy commanders and one Lieutenant Colonel from the Army as War College Fellows.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the exercise was conducted during the graduation ceremony of Course 3 participants of the college on Friday in Makurdi.
The War College was inaugurated in 2016 by the incumbent Chief of the Air Staff (CAS), Air Marshal, Sadique Abubakar.
It has graduated three sets including set 3/2018.
Speaking at the ceremony, Abubakar enjoined graduating officers of the college to utilise the skills and lessons they acquired during the course to bear on their future deployments with “utmost patriotism” .
He said the college was established to build capacities of officers through vigorous training that made them adaptive to the “ever changing global security environment”.
He also harped on the need to ” interrogate processes and procedures to determine gaps with a view to improving the efficiency and effectiveness”.
“We must have an in-depth understanding of those issues that determine contemporary conflicts which include conflict over resources; ethnicity; national and regional dominance,” the chief of the air staff said.
He also stressed the need to protect the civil populace during conventional and unconventional wars.
Sadique said the complex and dynamic nature of conflicts required enhanced knowledge and skills of warfare to achieve the desired results.
” I am convinced that this great institution has taken time and resources to adequately equip you with the knowledge required to navigate this delicate landscape,” he said.
He commended the Commandant and members of the faculty for the training and assured them of his continued support to ensure the success of the college in all its training programmes.
The Commandant of the college, AVM John Baba, commended the CAS for his commitment to capacity building through robust training of officers and said the initiative had started yielding results.
Baba said the college was the highest professional military training institution in the country for the air force and was playing a leading role in the articulation of strategy and doctrine necessary for the development of air power.
He said the course was inaugurated on Feb.15 with 19 officers who had all graduated.
He said participants were grilled in courses such as Air power Principles and Concepts; Warfare Studies; Fundamentals of Strategy; War Fighting and War Gaming.
” The curriculum is tilted toward air war studies, but the college still exposed participants to an appreciable level of training and research in security and defence studies,” the CAS said.
He said the set was introduced to a study tour of South Africa and Tanzania, being the first of such trips since the inception of the college.
NAN reports that high point of the ceremony was the award of certificates and prizes to the participants.
(NAN)
