Jonathan Rejected UK’s Offer To Help Rescue Chibok Girls – Cameron
A former British prime minister, David Cameron, has accused ex-president Goodluck Jonathan of being the reason the kidnapped Chibok School Girls were not rescued in 2014.
Disclosing this in a memoir, ‘For the Record’, Cameron said that Jonathan was unable to engage Nigerian soldiers to participate in operations the US and UK forces organised for the rescue of Chibok schoolgirls because of “politically appointed generals”.
The renowned Former PM accused Jonathan of sleeping at the wheel, while kidnappers were busy abducting school girls.
He said he was depressed when Jonathan refused to engage when US and UK offered to help rescue the girls they had located.
His words according to TheCable, “Iraq wasn’t the only place we would need our military to counter this extremist menace.
It too wanted to institute a caliphate, and like ISIS it would use whatever barbaric means it thought necessary,” Cameron wrote in the book.
“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 absolutely crucially, when we offered to help rescue the girls we had located, he refused.”
In his book, Cameron also said the Nigerian army was unable to participate in operations the US and UK forces organised for the rescue of Chibok schoolgirls because of “politically appointed generals”.
“We had to play the long game focusing on a much bigger training effort for the Nigerian military and intelligence forces and trying to promote more energetic leaders from the younger generation.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, as an expert on Nigeria, could be particularly useful on this and I invited him to join our NSC discussion.
“Some of the girls have managed to escape over the following four years, and others have been released, but over a hundred are still missing. Once again the combination of Islamist extremism and bad governance proved fatal.
“How did I feel about all this at the end of 2014? The answer is, depressed. ISIS now occupied an area larger than Britain. A similar brand of terrorism was being wrought by Boko Harem in west Africa), another ISIS affiliate in north Africa, and by al-Shabab (‘the youth) in east Africa, while related groups were springing up in the Philippines, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and the Caucasus.
There seemed to be no stopping an evil ideology that seduced minds from the badlands of Syt’tato bedrooms in Birmingham. When I spoke about the challenge publicly I tried to remain measured and resolute.
But privately did asked myself, would we ever be able to defeat this thing?”
Denial
Jonathan quashed Cameron’s allegations, describing it as a kaput memoir.
He said that nothing of such happened, saying that Cameron never called him for any help, despite the phone calls and letters he wrote to him.
“How could I write to appeal for help and then reject the very thing I appealed for”, he asked.
His words, “My Response To David Cameron’s Claims 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. 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. 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.
