Jonathan Denies rejecting UK offer to rescue Chibok girls

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.