The Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Adesola Amosu, on Monday dismissed insinuations linking the missing Air Force Alpha jet to sabotage.
The Alpha jet marked NAF 466 went missing while on an operation against insurgents in Adamawa State on Friday.
Amosu, who spoke with State House correspondents after a meeting with President Goodluck Jonathan and Vice-President Namadi Sambo, over the incident, also expressed hope that the two crew members might still be alive.
‘‘One of our Alpha Jets went on routine operation in the North-East . On its return, the pilots lost contact with the control towers and that made us to immediately initiate a search.
“But I am hopeful that before the end of the day or week we should be able to provide credible information as to the location of the aircraft and then the pilots.
“But one thing is clear whatever problem they had, an ejection was contemplated. It is therefore my hope that the pilots are still alive,’’ he said.
Amosu said the possibility of sabotage was zero given the fact that the Air Force was in full control of the nation’s air space.
He said, “Sabotage? No, because it is a distance of just from Maiduguri to Yola. We are in full control of the air space. But don’t forget that when you lose radio signal, it becomes very challenging. There are so many possibilities but we are working on them.
“The weather has not been helpful as we have deployed all our surveillance capability, the citizens have been very, very helpful and we have got good information from them.
“But you know, in the aviation sector, we have some specific information that we ought to have to make the search easy.
“But the information we are getting from the citizens is good but not sufficient enough for us to define the area of search. But we have an idea of where the aircraft could be.
“Do not forget that it is the open Sahel. Some people may think it is easy but in the open Sahel, sometimes it is even very challenging.
“Human beings standing may look like trees and again the area we are talking about we have operations going on there and we have limitations as to how low we come to conduct the search,” he said.
