We do not have all the assets to cover every inch of Sambisa Forest - Chief of air staff

- Chief of the Air Staff, Air Marshal Sadique Abubakar, opens up on some steps taken by the Nigerian Air Force (NAF) to end Boko Haram

- Abubakar in a recent interview revealed that the Nigerian Air Force needs intelligence services to tackle bombings in the country

- The chief of air staff also said the military is winning the war against the insurgents in the North East

Nigeria's Chief of the Air Staff, Air Marshal Sadique Abubakar, has revealed the major challenges the Nigerian Air Force (NAF) faces dealing with bombings.

Speaking in an interview with The Guardian, Abubakar revealed some steps taken by NAF as the country seeks a permanent solution to the evil perpetrated by Boko Haram insurgents.

NAIJ.com gathered that the chief of air staff noted that the service has had its fair share of challenges in the areas of men and materials.

READ ALSO: 3 female Boko Haram terrorists killed in new attack (photos)

Read excerpts from the interview below:

Sambisa Forest was ransacked several times. Even the Bring Back Our Girls Group were flown there to see things for themselves.

So where are the remnants of Boko Haram operating from?

Sambisa Forest is still substantially under the control of our forces and we fly over it day and night. Sometimes, for some of these pilots, as we are going to sleep, that is when they are getting airborne. They take off at 11 pm and land at 5 am.

All they want is to make sure that Nigeria is safe. Remember that the forest itself is about 60, 000sq kilometres, and you can’t be on every inch of it, but where the Boko Haram insurgents had their headquarters at Camp Zero has been dismantled.

Do we have all the forces to capture every inch of the land within that 60,000sq km? That is the question we should be asking.

From time to time when the insurgents try to infiltrate, we have addressed those threats adequately because we have our airplanes that are keeping an eye on what is happening in some of the areas where we think are too close to our forces, or too close to communities.

Of course, we do not have all the assets to cover every inch of Sambisa Forest in order to see what is going on there. What we do is, we go out on Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance (ISR), prioritise the areas where we feel there are threats and once we confirm those threats, we take adequate steps to protect our troops and communities.

Do you sincerely think the military is winning the ongoing counterinsurgency war in the North East?

I think we are. I will say without any reservation that the war is being won. Why? All you need to do is put what was happening in the past to what is happening today.

I remember when I used to travel to Kaduna State to join the queue of people searching on the road. Most times one was never sure that he would get out of that queue alive.

There were explosions in queues in Kaduna town itself, but we don’t have that now.

In the past, you had Boko Haram convoys made up of up to 15 or 20 Hilux vehicles, and we were all wondering where these guys were coming from, but today, we do not have those convoys moving from one village to the other killing people.

Yes, we still have bombings here and there, but for us in the air force, we will do everything to make sure that we adequately deal with the situation of bombings. In doing so, we need serious intelligence because there is no fighter aircraft in the world that can detect a 13-year-old girl carrying explosives.

It is the community that can help a lot in that regards by telling us this girl is suspected to be into this, and it is this person that is arming her. This is an aspect of the intelligence that we need.

When we get that, we can then go to the root of it, but even at that, we are still working hand-in-hand with the Nigerian Army, and we have deployed additional equipment to the North East to make sure that we support the land operations to be able to detect these terrorists ahead of time, and alert the relevant sector to take care of them before they get into where they are going to kill innocent people.

We are also conducting surveillance over the University of Maiduguri, where our helicopters are regularly flying day and night to see if we can pick up anything. But like I said, the major issues with bombings has to do with intelligence; and we must find out where these girls are mobilised from.

In counter insurgency operations, dealing with these issue have several components, and the military components is just one of the many others that need to be put in place.

I think the Federal Government is doing everything humanly possible with other levels of government to see that they address those other components so that the military component would also add value to whatever that is required.

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In a previous report by NAIJ.com, the Nigerian military attributed the accidental bombing at an internally displaced persons camp in Rann, Borno state to lack of appropriate markings.

In a statement released by the Defence Headquarters on Saturday, July 22, on the bombing and two major issues in the force, the military said boards of inquiries were constituted.

The DHQ in its statement said it was provided with the reports of all the boards constituted, to investigate the various incidents.

You can watch this NAIJ.com video of Nigerian Air Force operations against Boko Haram: