The Nigeria Air Force (NAF) has said on Friday that it is investigating the circumstances surrounding the death of its Flying Officer, Tolulope Arotile, in a road accident. It establishes that two persons were being held.
The NAF Director of Public Relation and Information, Air Commodore Ibikunle Daramola, says that at the end of the investigation, “whatever information needs to go out will go out.”
Later, on Friday, the NAF spokesman releases a statement, noting that Arotile would be buried on Thursday, July 23, at the National Military Cemetery, Abuja, with full military honors.
The NAF Authority says that it will continue to support female pilots’ training, saying 11 are currently undergoing training within and outside Nigeria.
The NAF announces the death on Arotile on Tuesday. She is the first Nigerian female combat helicopter pilot. She died at the NAF base in Kaduna State from a road traffic accident.
The force stated that the young female officer sustained head injuries from the accident when she “inadvertently hit by the reversing vehicle of an excited former Air Force secondary school classmate while trying to greet her.”
Arotile is a member of the Nigerian Defence Academy Regular Course 64. She is from Iffe in the Ijumu Local Government Area of Kogi State, and contributed to the efforts to rid the North-Central states of bandits and other criminal elements by flying combat missions.
She was particularly a squadron leader in Operation Gama Aiki in Minna Niger State.
Notable Nigerians, including the President Muhammadu Buhari, have express shock over her death since Wednesday.
A Yoruba socio-cultural organization, Afenifere, however, on Thursday raised suspicion over the death of the female officer, rejecting the road accident explanation and calling for a thorough investigation into her death.
Daramola while speaking with journalists, says, “First of all, in my first statement, I said she died from a road traffic accident. I further clarified the nature of the road traffic accident where one of her excited classmates who saw her reversed his car which led to him hitting her and knocking her down. This led to head injuries and a lot of hemorrhaging which ultimately resulted in her death.
“The two boys are in custody and the NAF will do a thorough investigation into the matter. It is a routine process – our own processes that are ongoing because it happened inside a NAF base. At the appropriate time, whatever information needs to go out will go out. But we cannot pre-empt that investigation process.
“Whatever needs to be known will be known; it is standard practice. So, we are investigating the circumstances leading to her death by a road traffic accident. It is an investigation because it may go beyond NAF.”
