Goodluck Jonathan, former Nigerian president, has denied
claims by former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, David Cameron, that his
government rejected the help of the UK government to rescue the Chibok girls
after they were abducted in April 2014.
Cameron in his recently released memoir titled ''In For The
Record'', Cameron claimed some British troops spotted the location of the
abducted Chibok girls and offered to help in rescuing them but Jonathan
refused.
““In early 2014 a group of its fighters centered the
government secondary school in the village of Chibok, seizing 276 teenage
girls. They were taken to camps deep in the forest. The Christians among them
were forced to convert to Islam. Many were sold as slaves, entering the same
endless violent nightmare the Yazidi women suffered.
“As ‘Bring Back Our Girls’ campaign spread across the world,
we embedded a team of military and intelligence experts in Nigeria, and sent
spy planes and Tornadoes with thermal imaging to search for the missing girls.
And, amazingly, from the skies above a forest three times the size of Wales, we
managed to locate some of them.
But Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, seemed to be
asleep at the wheel. When he eventually made a statement, it was to accuse the
campaigners of politicising the tragedy. And absoluely crucially, when we
offered to help rescue the girls we had located, he refused.” Cameron wrote in
his memor
Reacting to the former Prime Minister's claim, Jonathan in a
statement released by his media aide, Ikechukwu Eze, said Cameron was a liar.
“I read the comments by former British Prime Minister, David
Cameron, in his new book, For the Record, in which he accused me and the
Nigerian Government, which I headed, of corruption and rejecting the help of
the British Government in rescuing the Chibok Girls, who were kidnapped on
April 14, 2014,” he said.
“It is quite sad that Mr. Cameron would say this because
nothing of such ever occurred. As President of Nigeria, I not only wrote
letters to then Prime Minister David Cameron, I also wrote to the then US
President, Barrack Obama, and the then French President, François Hollande, as
well as the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, appealing to them for
help in rescuing the Chibok Girls.
“How could I write to appeal for help and then reject the very
thing I appealed for?
“Also, history contradicts Mr. Cameron. On March 8, 2012,
when the same Boko Haram linked terrorists abducted a British expatriate named
Chris McManus, along with an Italian hostage Franco Lamolinara, in Sokoto, I,
as Nigerian President, personally authorised a rescue effort by members of the
British military Special Boat Service supported by officers and men of the
Nigerian Army, to free the abducted men.
“So, having set a precedent like that, why would I reject
British help in rescuing the Chibok Girls, if it was offered? I also authorised
the secret deployment of troops from the United Kingdom, the United States and
Israel as a result of the Chibok incident, so how Mr. Cameron could say this
with a straight face beats me.
“I would urge the public to take Mr. Cameron’s accusations
with a grain of salt. I will not be the first person to accuse him of lying on
account of this book, and with the reactions in the UK so far, I definitely
will not be the last.
Moreover, on March 8, 2017, the British Government of former
Prime Minister, Theresa May, in a widely circulated press statement, debunked
this allegation and said there was no truth in it after Mr. Cameron had made
similar statements to the Observer of the UK.
In his book, Mr. Cameron failed to mention that I wrote him
requesting his help on Chibok. Why did he suppress that information? I remind
him that copies of that letter exist at the State Houses in Nigeria and London.
He never called me on the phone to offer any help. On the contrary, I am the
one that reached out to him.” Jonathan said in his statement
