The Nigeria Air Force has partnered with technical experts from Nigerian Universities and Research Institute to develop innovative fabrications to bolster the fighting capabilities of the service, Air vice Marshall Sadique Abubakar, Chief of Standard and Evaluation in the Air force has said.

He spoke at a meeting with technical experts in Abuja today, convened to kick off an inter command competition on Research and Development within the Air Force.

According to him, "this is the first time in the history of the Air Force that the Chief of Air staff is introducing the Nigeria Air Force inter command most innovative Research and Development Project Competition, among commands.

"Since the Chief of Air Staff came in, he came up with a vision of transforming the Nigerian Air Force, into a self reliant and highly professional fighting force through the use of innovative technology in addressing some of our challenges that we are facing." He said.

He also said, "We have entered an MOU with a number of universities in Nigeria, and other public research institutions, to see how we can partner together, to see how we can move the service forward, partnership in R n D, between the military and the civil is not something that is new, it is happening all over the world.

"This competition is another way of taking research and development to a much higher level in the Air Force, the idea is to promote R and d in the air force, the culture of believing that it has what it takes to move the service forward." He added.

AVM Sadique Abubakar, further said, "the main focus is to see that our aircrafts are flying, we don't have to be relying on foreign expertise to get minor spare parts, because of hydraulic diaphragm we now say we have to wait for another six seven months for someone to bring it from Ukraine or Russia, these are things that we can do and we have been able to do it.

"Our cameras for surveillance on the Augusta 109 helicopters, we have done a lot in that area also, the general area we are focusing on how to get out air planes flying.

The experts who are expected to be examiners in the inter command R n D completion include science and engineering scholars from, the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Ahmadu Bello University Zaria, National Centre for Technology Management, Engineering Faculty at Yaba college of Technology and the University of Lagos.