AVM Muhammad Yakubu on Monday took over leadership of the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) in Kaduna.
Yakubu took over from AVM Musbau Olatunji who is due for retirement. He is the 11th commandant of the institute.
Addressing the management staff of the institute, Yakubu said he would work towards making AFIT the best university in Nigeria and among the top-rated universities in the world.
He urged the staff to be dedicated and ensure total commitment in discharging their duties promptly and diligently.
He stressed the need for his leadership to focus much on innovation and research, noting that Nigeria being in crisis needs innovation in many areas.
“In this regards, I will not want to restrict innovation to only one area, I want us to think open and out of the box on innovative ideas for us to see its viability.
“As a military institution, we are, however, focused on innovations that will help us defend our nation, like weapon and aviation technology then we can look elsewhere because there is no innovation that is useless,” he said.
He added that he would also encourage the institute to focus on doable innovations that would reduce the country’s dependency as a nation.
He appealed for support to enable him achieve positive results towards uplifting the institution to greater heights.
In his farewell address, the outgone Commandant, AVM Olatunji, urged AFIT staff to continue giving in their best and be more committed in their duties towards ensuring sustenance and continuity of achievement recorded.
“The University is still very young, there are still a lot of work to do, the staff must continue to sacrifice a lot of their time and resources to ensure that things are put in place.
“Those sacrifices are part of the efforts which are needed to continue to ensure the university grows to what is expected by everyone,” he said.
Olatunji appealed to the staff to give the new commandant maximum support needed to achieve the said target of the institution.
The new Commandant (Yakubu), was born on the 3 March, 1957, at Yana Shira Local Government Area of Bauchi state.
He attended the prestigious Air force military school, Jos, being one of the pioneer students.
He was also commissioned into the Nigerian Air Force as a Pilot Officer on 22 September 1990 after graduating from the Nigerian Defence Academy as a member of the 37th regular course.
Before his appointment as AFIT Commandant, he was the Air Officer Commanding Ground Training Command.