CHIBOK GIRLS: Jonathan denies shunning UK, says I also called US, France, china and isreal for help

Nigeria’s former President Goodluck Jonathan have denied reports that he rejected assistance for the United Kingdom government to help rescue the missing Chibok girls soon after they were kidnapped by the Boko Haram terror group.

According to him, the nation was well aware that he reached out to the governments of France, US and the UK to help Nigeria after the girls were kidnapped from their secondary school in Chibok, Borno State.

A foreign tabloid had reported on Saturday that the Jonathan administration would not accept assistance from the UK government to rescue the girls, even after air reconnaissance by the Royal Airforce located the whereabouts of the girls in the terrorists’ enclave.

According to the report, “The girls were located in the first few weeks of the RAF mission,” a source involved in Operation Turus told the Observer. “We offered to rescue them, but the Nigerian government declined.”

But Jonathan in a statement by his media adviser, Ikechukwu Eze, said the lies in the report are self-evident, as the media actively covered the multinational efforts and collaboration, and that some of the major powers deploying crack intelligence officers who worked with Nigerian security operatives, and those of its neighbours.

He said, “In the course of the mission, the international team, including members from Nigeria’s neighbours of Chad, Niger and Cameroun, met regularly with our own intelligence officers to plan and conduct their operations.

“In fact, the Jonathan administration was so genuinely supportive that the foreign powers involved were granted permission to overfly our airspace, while conducting the search and rescue missions,” he said.

Eze also revealed, that the ex-president personally wrote to former U.S president, Barack Obama, President Francois Hollande of France, and David Cameron, the former Prime Minister of the UK on the issue.

Jonathan, he further said, also made personal contacts to the governments of Israel and China, seeking their assistance in the search for the abducted Chibok girls.

“We are however not surprised that this kind of concocted story is coming out at this point in time, as it appears that some people who have obviously been playing politics with the issue of the Chibok girls will stop at nothing to further their interest”, he asserted.

Read also: ‘Jonathan rejected British offer to rescue Chibok schoolgirls’

About 276 girls were kidnapped in April 2014 from the Government Secondary School in the town of Chibok, Borno State, by Boko Haram. 57 of them escaped over the next few months.

There were hopes that more of the girls, if not all would be released last year, when news made the round that Boko Haram had opened a negotiation line to release the girls in exchange for their jailed commanders.

Though the Nigerian government was not forthcoming on this, 21 girls of the girls were released to the government in October 2016. Earlier in May 2016, one of the missing girls, Amina Ali, was found. She claimed that the remaining girls were still there, but that six had died.

An advocacy group, BringBAckOurGirls (#BBOG) led by a former minister for education, Mrs Oby Ezekwesili has continued to be the lone consistent voice clamouring for the release of all the girls.