The office of the former President Goodluck
Jonathan has refuted claims that the last administration rejected an offer made
by British forces to rescue the kidnapped Chibok school girls.
Report by guardian.com claims the Royal Air
Force of the United Kingdom, on a mission named Operation Turus, conduct air
recce over northern Nigeria for several months after the girls were taken in
April 2014.
“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.”
A statement by Jonathan’s media adviser,
Ikechukwu Eze, said the lies in this report are self-evident, noting that
Nigerians are conversant with the effort made by the Jonathan administration to
rescue the girls.
Eze said the media actively covered the
multinational efforts and collaboration which involved some of the major powers
deploying their crack intelligence officers to work with Nigerian security
operatives, and those of its neighbours.
“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.
According to Eze, the ex-president personally
wrote to former U.S president, Barack Obama, President Francois Hollande of
France, David Cameron, the former Prime Minister of the UK, including personal
contacts made 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.”
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