By; ISAAC ODEH, Kaduna.
The Air Secretary, Headquarters, Nigerian Air Force, Air Vice Marshal MG Abdul-Wahab has commended President Buhari for his continuous support to the Nigerian Air Force despite the harsh economic realities in the country.
He made the commendation during the combined graduation ceremony of Ground Training Centre Sundry Courses at the Air Force Base Kaduna and assured the president of judicious use of the available resources using the principle of doing more with less.
He however appealed to the graduation students to be disciplined and that discipline is the bedrock of any fighting force and that a disciplined personnel would serve with integrity, place service before self and strive to excel in all he does, adding that the Nigerian Air Force had invested enormous resources to bring them to this level and therefore required them to put in their best whenever they find themselves.
The Air Vice Marshal also charged them to be innovative in applying all that they learnt in their respective courses towards the actualization of the Chief of Air Staff’s effort to “Reposition the Nigerian Air Force into a highly professional and disciplined force through capacity building initiatives for effective, efficient and timely employment of air power in response to Nigeria’s National Security imperatives”.
To this end, he said that all of them must ensure that they take immediate steps to properly get themselves grounded in the tenets of their various trades and that they are expected to build on the Solid Foundation laid for them while on the respective courses and continue to practice what they had learnt when getting to their various place.
Earlier, the commandant of the Ground Training Centre, Nigerian Air Force. Base Kaduna, Air Vice Marshal, Abdulganiyu Olabisi said that the objective of the courses embarked upon by the graduating students is to impart basic skills and knowledge to enable the airmen and airwomen perform basic functions in their specialty and while the upgrading and advance courses are meant to provide airmen and airwomen with higher skills and knowledge required to perform. Specialized functions in the various Nigerian Air Force specialties.
He disclosed that in conducting these programmes, the Ground Training Centre holds sacrosanct the policy of zero tolerance for substandard performance and that from the beginning of the last training cycle in January this year, the minimum pass mark for sundry courses was increased from 40 percent to 50 percent to ensure that only personnel with requisite capacity and work ethics are mustered as tradesmen in the various non-technical ground and out of the 185 students that were nominated for 8 courses graduating, 6 of them representing about 3 percent could not successfully complete the course due to poor performance.
However he said that there is appreciable in student’s performance in this training cycle when compared with the performance in the first Training cycle of this year when about 9 percent of the students failed, adding that the improvement in performance is partly born out of the awareness that Ground Training Centre will no longer accept “let my people go” grade aka c- as pass mark.
