The Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Sadique Abubakar, says the Nigerian Air Force has no intelligence on whether the Chibok girls are in Sambisa forest or not.
Abubakar spoke during an interactive session with journalists on Saturday in Abuja, said, however the NAF was working round the clock to rescue the girls and other Nigerians abducted by Boko Haram.
Responding to the question on if the NAF had any intelligence on whether the Chibok girls were in the Sambisa Forest or not, Abubakar said; “Honestly we don’t. That is the truth of the matter. Even if you see women that are dressed in hijab, how are you sure they are women, that they are not men?
“It is only when you get there and they remove the hijab that you now realise that they are men and they have their rifles.
“There is no credible intelligence that will specifically tell you that these girls are here.”
Abubakar said the Air Force has made it its duty to fly its planes daily to search for the Chibok girls, adding that the military, like other Nigerians are passionate and concerned about their rescue.
According to him, the ISR is aimed at rescuing the Chibok girls and other Nigerians abducted by the sect.
He said; “There is no day that the sun rises and sets that we do not go out hoping to see these girls. From January this year to August 17, we flew 2,600 hours. About 50 per cent of that was Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance.
“We are hoping that through the intelligence, we will be able to capture the movement of those girls, we will be able to locate what we consider legitimate targets.”
He said the latest Boko Haram video, where the sect displayed some girls, which it claimed were killed by military bombardment, as cheap propaganda of a incapacitated group.
Abubakar explained that there was no way bodies of people killed by bombardment could be intact as shown in the video.
He stated, “Even the IED (improvised explosive device) that they (the sect) developed, have you ever seen a complete body together after an attack on any location?”
He insisted that what was shown in the video could not have been something that happened after an air strike.
He added, “These guys are just trying to whip up sentiment because they know that every Nigerian is concerned about the girls.”
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