Kingsley Nwezeh in Abuja
Troops of Operation Desert Sanity on a clearance patrol in Sambisa Forest yesterday uncovered the wreckage of a missing Nigerian Air Force Alpha Jet (NAF475).
The fighter jet went off the radar on March 31, 2021, with two crew members.
A statement issued by the Nigerian Army on its Twitter handle said it uncovered the wreckage in Sambisa Forest.
“Troops of Operation Desert Sanity on a clearance patrol in Sambisa Forest, Borno State, have uncovered the wreckage of crashed Alpha Jet aircraft (NAF475) that went off the radar with two crew members on 31 March 2021. Further exploitation ongoing”, it tweeted.
It remained unclear whether the aircraft was brought down by terrorists or crashed.
The jet marked NAF 475, is believed to have gone down 30 kilometres south of Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, with two Flight Lieutenants as pilots.
The then Director of Public Relations, NAF, Air Commodore Edward Gabkwet, had confirmed that the fighter jet lost contact with the radar.
Gabkwet said the plane disappeared while on an interdiction mission in support of ground troops in the ongoing counterinsurgency operations in the northeast.
“The loss of radar contact occurred at about 5:08 pm on 31 March 2021,” he had said.
“Details of the whereabouts of the aircraft or likely cause of contact loss are still sketchy but will be relayed to the general public as soon as they become clear. Meanwhile, search and rescue efforts are ongoing,” he added.
However, the Boko Haram terror group later released a video showing its fighters shooting down an aircraft believed to be the missing NAF 475 Alpha Jet.
In the seven-minute-long video, the jet was seen flying low to the ground while the insurgents shot at it.
But Gabkwet dismissed the terrorists’ claim, insisting that there was an ongoing search for the missing fighter jet.
“The attention of the Nigerian Air Force (NAF) has been drawn to some videos being circulated on Social Media, as well as media reports are drawn from there, alleging that the NAF Alpha Jet aircraft, which was reported missing in Borno State on 31 March 2021 after losing radar contact, was shot down by terrorists.
One of such videos, in particular, began with sporadic shooting by several terrorists, including underage children on motorcycles and vehicles. It later skipped abruptly to a scene depicting an aircraft exploding mid-air, supposedly as a result of enemy action. Another part of the video showed a terrorist, who, while standing by the wreckage, claimed that they had shot down the NAF aircraft.
“Although the video is still being thoroughly analysed, it is evident that most parts of the video were deliberately doctored to give a false impression that the aircraft was shot down. For instance, the video clip failed to show the correlation between the sporadic shooting, which even from casual observation was aimed at ground targets, and the sudden mid-air aircraft explosion.
In addition, it is almost impossible for an aircraft to have exploded mid-air, in the manner depicted in the video, and still have a good part of its fuselage, including its tail, intact. Indeed, an explosive impact of that nature would have scattered the debris of the aircraft across several miles,” he had said.
