Nigerian Air Force

The Nigerian Air Force was created on 18 April 1964 by the Nigerian Air Force Act No. 11 of 1964, partly in response to the 1962 Anglo-Nigerian Defence Pact's collapse and partly to provide a transport arm for ECOMOG-style peacekeeping that Nigeria was already projecting (UN ONUC in the Congo, 1960–64). The Federal Republic of Germany provided the initial Air Training Mission to Nigeria (ATMN) of about 100 personnel led by Colonel Gerhard Kahtz, who set up the Nigerian Air Force Flying Training School at Kaduna.

The NAF's first combat aircraft were Soviet-supplied MiG-17F fighters and Ilyushin Il-28 bombers delivered through Egypt in mid-1967, just as the Civil War began. Egyptian and British mercenary pilots — most famously the Egyptian pilot 'John Peters' and the Briton 'Genocide' (Group Captain Ares Klootwijk) — flew many of the early combat sorties; Nigerian pilots trained in the USSR and Czechoslovakia took over by 1969.

Major equipment generations: MiG-17/Il-28 (Civil War, 1967–70); Soviet MiG-21 and Anglo-French Jaguar (1970s–80s); Aermacchi MB-339 and Alpha Jet (1980s–present); Chinese F-7Ni air-superiority fighters (2006); JF-17 Thunder (2021); Super Tucano A-29 from the United States (2021) for the Boko Haram campaign.

Operationally the NAF has flown in every Nigerian conflict since the Civil War — ECOMOG Liberia and Sierra Leone, Bakassi Peninsula (1981, 1994, 2002), the Boko Haram/ISWAP campaign since 2009 (Operations LAFIYA DOLE, HADIN KAI), and the North-West banditry campaign (Operation HADARIN DAJI). It also operates the Presidential Air Fleet at NAF Base Abuja.