Foreign military intervention won’t compromise Nigeria’s sovereignty, says CAS

The Chief of Air Staff (CAS) Air Marshal Adesola Amosu yesterday declared that the presence of foreign military forces to give support on the war against insurgency operations would not undermine the Nations sovereignty.
According to Air Marshal Adesola,”when they come in like that for assistance there will be something like a memorandum of understanding, there will be guidelines and everybody will keep to its own agreement”.

Asked if the foreign forces refused to work with some Nigerian security personnel, the CAS said,”what you are asking for, I don’t think is what we should say in the open, it is confidential, but it is not what will compromise our sovereignty we are still working as a nation, and we have made it very clear we will provide the information, if you want extra you should ask for it, and I think they will be ready to give all.”

The CAS spoke to journalist yesterday in Abuja after the decorating ceremony of twelve newly promoted Air Warrant Officers (AWO) who are the main custodian of discipline for other ranks at the Air Force headquarters in Abuja.
He explained that, “what you have to know first about multinationals coming to our aid is that it is not strange because nations don’t fight alone, again you have to fight as a coalition of states.”

“Don’t forget the NATO alliances, even great nations like Britain have it in their agreement that they will always respect the NATO alliance. It is not the first time that nations are working together, during the Ecomog operations in Liberia we got assistance in terms of information from the west,” he added.
Air Marshal Amosu noted that what is happening today is not strange,”don’t forget we even acknowledged in one of the drivers for my vision is to recognise credible international partnership, so its not strange, its what we have put on paper and its happening today, so we are happy.”
He also said, “partnerships and alliances bring to you those capabilities that you never had before, its cheap and its credible, thank God we are going for it.”

On the promotion of 12 Air Warrant Officers, he said, “they are to help us as the lead in the feed back mechanism, we need to know that the condition of our men are within all we need to do to put them in the right frame to work and to do those extras and the basic function they are suppose to carry out.”

The Air Warrant Officer is the highest rank for enlisted airforce personnel. This is the highest number of AWO promoted at the same time in the airforce and act as a bridge between the officer cadre and the other ranks.
The CAS noted that, “we can not do it alone, we need to delegate and we have to be sure that those people that are in charge to lead the feed back mechanism are properly selected.”

He said “again as we started the fight against insurgency and terrorism we observed that some of them in the field performed creditable better than during peace time, on seeing those attributes we thought we ought to have given them the recognition.”
Responding to a question of poor motivation in the armed forces, the CAS said, “let me be very clear about the issue of motivation, not just the Nigerian airforce even in the armed forces, officer and men are well motivated we get what we need we get regularly.
He lamented that don’t forget in every society you still have one or two people that no matter what you give them they still ask for more, its natural in human endeavour that people will look for more but can you satisfy every body.