Nigerian Air Force, Innoson sign MOU for Fighter Jets' Spare Parts

Nigerian Air Force, Innoson sign MOU for Fighter Jets' Spare Parts

To prosecute the war against Boko Haram insurgency in the North-east geo-political zone with great effectiveness, the Nigerian Air Force today signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Innoson Vehicle Manufacturing Company, an indigenous car manufacturing company, for research and production of spare parts for its fighter jets.

The efforts are to ensure that aerial battle against the Islamic extremists are not encumbered as a result of lack of spare parts to fix broken down fighter jets and also use the opportunity to encourage local manufacturers.

The Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Sadique Abubakar, told journalists at the company's headquarters at Nnewi, Anambra State, that the collaboration between the company and the Air Force had kept its Jet fleet running for months now.

Abubakar, who was represented by the Chief Of Policy and Plans, Air Vice-Marshal James Gbum, said that the MoU would further solidify the collaboration, improve local content and engineering as well as serve the country a lot of foreign exchange used in importing the expensive parts.

``Our war efforts will be in vain if we don’t do something to ensure we get spare parts because, the Alpha Jets for instance one of our fighter aircraft; that have form the back-bone of our struggle against Boko Haram, we were (once) down with one or two at most due to lack of spare parts and mainly the break assemblies of these aircrafts,” he said.