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Citat:Drones Nigeria bought from Israel grounded, reveals manufacturers
By EMMA EMEOZOR, with agency report Aircraft manufacturers have revealed how Nigeria bought Israeli surveillance drones years ago, which are now grounded owing to poor maintenance.
Had the planes handy, they would have been deployed to hunt Boko Haram, especially on the abduction of schoolgirls in Chibok, Borno State, they stated.
“To the best of our knowledge, these systems aren’t operational,” Tsur Dvir, marketing officer for Aeronautics Defense Systems, a firm based south of Tel Aviv, Israel that supplied Nigeria with Aerostar unmanned aerial vehicles, told Reuters yesterday.
Dvir, speaking on the sidelines of a conference organised by Israel Defense magazine, told Reuters that since the drones were purchased several years ago, Nigerian clients had not commissioned Aeronautics to carry out any routine maintenance.
“We did receive an inquiry from them about spare parts, but it never turned into a deal. I wish it had,” Dvir said, arguing that with their extensive flying range and thermal cameras capable of picking up body heat at night, the Aerostars could have helped screen northern Nigeria for the missing girls.
“They (drones) are probably parked in a yard somewhere, “ Dvir stated, but declining to say how many Aerostars were bought by Nigeria.
Reuters reported that Nigeria’s defence spokesman could not be reached for comments.
Last December, the Federal Government also unveiled a locally made drone at an Air Force base in Kaduna, although it has not flown since.
A government adviser said the Israeli drones were among many procurements that quickly went obsolete owing to lack of maintenance.
Reuters said a Federal Government source and a former Israeli military attaché to Nigeria both confirmed the information, although they said details were sketchy owing to the secretive nature of Israeli-Nigerian military cooperation.
The former attaché said the deal was struck in 2006, with a view to deploying the drones in the oil-producing Niger Delta, where militants were attacking crude pipelines and kidnapping oil workers before an amnesty three years later. They never flew.
Neither source, nor the company, knew how many had been bought, but an aerospace industry source said they each would have been worth between $15 million and $17 million.
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