NIGERIA LOSES FIRST FEMALE HELICOPTER PILOT AT 24

Nigeria’s first female helicopter pilot, Tolulope Arotile, is dead.

Aged 24,  the late Arotile, who was decorated on 15th October 2019 as the first female combat helicopter pilot in the Nigerian Air Force, died of head injuries she sustained in a road traffic crash at the Nigeria Air Force Base, Kaduna.

The death of the young Flying Officer, who hailed from Iffe in Ijumu local government area of Kogi state, came barely a year after she was winged as a combat helicopter pilot in the Air Force following the completion of her course in South Africa.

Confirming the accident, NAF Director of Public Relations and Information, Air Commodore Ibikunle Daramola, said until her death, ‪Flying Officer Arotile, who was commissioned into the NAF in September 2017 as a member of Nigerian Defence Academy Regular Course 64, was the first ever female combat helicopter pilot in the service.‬