Recently, the Nigerian Air Force deployed new helicopters to strengthen counterterrorism efforts with a new base in Katsina located Northwest. Nigerian Air Force (NAF) stationed two of its new Turkish Aerospace T-129 Atak helicopters, ISR, and drones to a fresh headquarters at Katsina’s Umar Musa Yaradua Airport; it was announced on 18 November when Minister of Defence Mohammed Badaru Abubakar visited the installation. The two helicopters, two Alpha Jets, and two King Airs were noticed in media coverage of the visit that the Ministry of Defence (MoD) expressed was to the Air Component of Sector 2 of Operation ‘Fansan Yamma’, which was recently launched to counter criminal gangs in the northwest of Nigeria.
The Minister of Defence briefed journalists at the base that unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) had also been positioned, although these had not been displayed. The MoD specified the facility as the NAF’s 213 Forward Operating Base (FOB) when Abubakar visited it in June while it was being used to back the now-superseded Operation ‘Hadarin Daji’.
The NAF previously did not have a headquarters capable of defending aircraft in Nigeria’s four northwestern states, with the closest being at Kaduna, 270 km south of the new FOB in Katsina and 355 km southeast of Sokoto International Airport. Last month, the Nigerian Defence Headquarters announced a so-called herders are now “a new terror group” affiliated with jihadists in the Sahel, a region that accounts for sizable chunks of global terrorism casualties.
“The terrorists took advantage of the gaps in cooperation between both countries and exploited the difficult terrains to make incursions in remote areas in some Northwestern states to spread their ideology,”
stated Edward Buba, the Director of Defence Media Operations.
The military, thus, declared nine members of the group wanted. They are Abu Khadijah, Abdurrahman, Dadi Gumba a.k.a Abu Muhammed, Usman Shehu, Abu Yusuf, Musa Wa’a, Ibrahim Suyeka, Ba Sulhu and Idris Taklakse. Now, the police have declared that the terrorist group operates in places like Tangaza, Gudu, Ilela, Binji, and Silame, and is considered to have entered the border communities from nations like Niger, Chad, and Mali.
