The Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshall ,Sadiq Abubakar, said that the Nigeria Air Force(NAF) has commenced production of uniforms and other official service items locally.
He also said that efforts were on to expand NAF tailoring workshop to enable massive production of personnel uniforms locally as directed by President Muhammadu Buhari.
Abubakar said this during a working visit to the Nigeria Air Force Investments Limited Tailoring Workshop at NAF Base Kaduna on Thursday.
“I want to see what we have as this facility was inaugurated in 2017 even before the presidential directive.
“We want to see what is on ground, so as to enhance it,” he said.
Abubakar said so far, the facility had provided 60,000 uniforms to its personnel and have currently embarked on making additional 17,000 uniforms.
“So what we want to see based on the Presidents directives was to enhance the capacity of this facility to wholly produce what we want.
” They are producing uniforms now, we are now looking towards flying suits, technicians suits and how we will produce them and other items required in the service here.”
He also disclosed that four of its personnel were trained in China on some of the requirements of NAF and have acquired relevant machines for that purpose.
“So we are making progress, we need to expand it because of the recent directive so that we have two more facilities one in Lagos and another in Makurdi,” he said.
He said NAF are partnering with a company in Lagos that has been supplying them materials locally.
“What we need to do is to expand our tailoring facilities to produce what is required by the service.
“All our recruits coming into the service get their uniforms from this facility, same with those who recently passed out as Direct Short Service Officers, about 200 of them.”
The Air Chief also inaugurated four flats of three rooms of married officers quarters named after Late Air Commodore Adanu Ochai and another structure at 1/10 officers transit quarters named after Late Flight Lt. Kalto Kilofas.
He explained that the two officers were immortalised for contributing significantly to the development of the service during their lifetime.
“They lost their lives defending Nigeria. So it is a good thing we are naming these structures in honour of these two distinguished Nigerians,” he said.
Abubakar said providing conducive atmosphere for the wellbeing of NAF personnel remained a top priority.
