Nigeria Air Force War College, Makurdi, has inducted nineteen senior officers comprising sixteen Wing Commanders, two Navy commanders and one Lieutenant Colonel from the Army as War College Fellows.

The exercise was conducted during the graduation ceremony of Course three participants of the college in Makurdi.

The War College was inaugurated in twenty-sixteen by the incumbent Chief of the Air Staff, Air Marshal, Sadique Abubakar.

It has graduated three sets including set 3/2018.

Speaking at the ceremony, Abubakar enjoined graduating officers of the college to utilise the skills and lessons they acquired during the course to bear on their future deployments with “utmost patriotism” .

He said the college was established to build capacities of officers through vigorous training that made them adaptive to the “ever changing global security environment”.

Abubakar also harped on the need to ” interrogate processes and procedures to determine gaps with a view to improving the efficiency and effectiveness”.

“We must have an in-depth understanding of those issues that determine contemporary conflicts which include conflict over resources; ethnicity; national and regional dominance,” the chief of the air staff said.

He also stressed the need to protect the civil populace during conventional and unconventional wars.

Abubakar said the complex and dynamic nature of conflicts required enhanced knowledge and skills of warfare to achieve the desired results.

” I am convinced that this great institution has taken time and resources to adequately equip you with the knowledge required to navigate this delicate landscape,” he said.

He commended the Commandant and members of the faculty for the training and assured them of his continued support to ensure the success of the college in all its training programmes.

The Commandant of the college, Air Vice Marshal John Baba, commended Abubakar for his commitment to capacity building through robust training of officers and said the initiative had started yielding results.

Baba said the college was the highest professional military training institution in the country for the air force and was playing a leading role in the articulation of strategy and doctrine necessary for the development of air power.

He said the course was inaugurated on Feb.15 with 19 officers who had all graduated, saying participants were grilled in courses such as Air power Principles and Concepts; Warfare Studies; Fundamentals of Strategy; War Fighting and War Gaming.

” The curriculum is tilted toward air war studies, but the college still exposed participants to an appreciable level of training and research in security and defence studies.

He said the set was introduced to a study tour of South Africa and Tanzania, being the first of such trips since the inception of the college.

The high point of the ceremony was the award of certificates and prizes to the participants.