Five officers of the ranks of air vice marshal and commodores (equivalent to army generals) and 30 other senior officers from the rank of group captain and below have been retired from the Nigeria Air For-ce, Daily Trust learnt.

The five top officers attained the mandatory years of retire-ment, a senior officer said."With the promotions, there were reshufflements within the hierarchy of the NAF. Some commanders have also changed positions and some have given ways to some of the newly pro-moted officers to climb the lad-der," he said.

The names of the affected of-ficers where not available to Daily Trust as at the time of fil-ling this report, but NAF's Di-rector of Public Relations and Information Group Captain M.G. Abdul-Wahab confirmed the retirements.

He said retirement of officers and men of the NAF is a conti-nuous process and should not be seen by the public as different from other armed forces.

"Retirement is a continuous process in the NAF just as rec-ruitment and promotions. And so naturally when some people are promoted others who have reached the peak of their career will be replaced," he said.

The NAF spokesman said the names of the affected officers would be released soon.

Recently the NAF promoted about a hundred officers to their next ranks.

Of the one hundred, nine were promoted to Air Vice Marshal, 29 to the rank of Air Commodore and others were promoted from the rank Group Captains and below.