The Nigerian Air Force Denies Locating Missing Chibok Girls

The Nigerian Air Force has denied reports that it’s operatives had located the missing girls of Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok.

The Director, Public Relations and Information of the NAF, Group. Capt. Ayodele Famuyiwa, said in an electronic mail on Saturday that the claim misrepresented an interview he granted Channels Television on February 12, 2016.

According to him, what was said was that the NAF had the capacity to identify possible areas where the girls might be held.

Famuyiwa said that while the NAF had not identified the specific location of the missing secondary school girls who were abducted in April 20, 2014, the service had been working hard with surveillance aircraft covering a wide area in the search for the girls.

He said that the NAF would continue to contribute to the mission to degrade the capacity of the insurgents and to work towards finding the girls and other Nigerians held captive by the insurgents.

“The attention of the Nigerian Air Force has been drawn to a statement to the effect that the NAF has located the position of the Chibok girls. Please, let it be known that this statement is a misrepresentation of the interview that the NAF’s Director of Public Relations granted the Channels Television that was aired on Friday 12 February 2016.

“The NAF is hereby making it categorically clear that in the said interview the director made mention of the NAF’s ability to identify possible location that the girls might be in.

“Hence, the NAF wishes to categorically state that it has at no time identified the specific location of the Chibok girls. However, it is working round the clock with surveillance aircraft covering the over 157,000 km2 area of the North East in order to identify the position of not only the Chibok girls but other Nigerians that might have been held captives.

“Towards the realization of this goal, the NAF has from January 2016 till date using aircraft, ISR platforms such as ATR-42, B-350 and CH-3 UAV, flown surveillance missions totaling over 346 hours consuming about 85,887 litres of Jet A-1 and 3,830 litres of Mogas costing N15,337,862:50 and $19,150:00 respectively.

“Therefore, whilst the specific position of the Chibok girls is not yet ascertained by the NAF, we have not folded our arms on the surveillance flights and will continue to use these flights to degrade the capacity of the terrorists and as soon as possible locate the position of the Chibok girls and other Nigerians that are under captivity.” The statement read.