I didn’t reject UK offer to rescue Chibok girls – Jonathan

*What then did you do? Asked Respondents

…“the statement claimed to be Jonathan’s reaction insults our sensibility as Nigerians who bore the brunt and pains of insecurity under his government for him to say he facilitated regular meeting of international team and our neighbouring officers ‘to plan and conduct their operations.’ The question now is, did those international teams actually implement the operations they met regularly to plan? If the answer is no and we know it is no, why?  This information by Guardian has been on not just today but since Jonathan was in power.  We also heard that even some America forces that came had to leave half way without doing anything.  Jonathan should tell us why, not to just deny a media report we already heard of before now.”

The immediate past President Goodluck Jonathan has refuted claims that the last administration headed by him 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.”

Jonathan, who spoke through a statement by his media adviser, Ikechukwu Eze, said the lies in the report were self-evident, noting that Nigerians were 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.”

Some of the respondents of The DEFENDER however said Mr. Jonathan could have had his way to blanket the foreign media report as full of lies but, according to one, “what the former President cannot be allowed to have is dodge explanation of how he actually collaborated with the foreign forces that he mentioned in the rebuttal with a view to rescuing the school girls.”

One of the respondents, who usually would like to speak under condition of anonymity, said, “the statement claimed to be Jonathan’s reaction insults our sensibility as Nigerians who bore the brunt and pains of insecurity under his government for him to say he facilitated regular meeting of international team and our neighbouring officers ‘to plan and conduct their operations.’ The question now is, did those international teams actually implement the operations they met regularly to plan? If the answer is no and we know it is no, why?  This information by Guardian has been on not just today but since Jonathan was in power.  We also heard that even some America forces that came had to leave half way without doing anything.  Jonathan should tell us why, not to just deny a media report we already heard of before now.

“Well, I would have expected former President Jonathan not to have reacted to that media report because it is a clear development that we all saw.  He should tell us how suddenly Admiral Murtala Nyako became sacrificial lamb immediately after he opened up on what he saw in Adamawa forest about Nigerian military helicopter supplying parcels to Boko Haram settlement because nobody has ever claimed that they didn’t know where Boko Haram insurgents were settled.  What people always said was that it was very impossible for anybody to move closer to talk less of making attempt to attack them. Admiral Nyako reportedly saw them being supplied and he made attempt to move closer but he was fired.  Who fired him? Jonathan as Commander-in-Chief in that era should tell us.  Not to come and tell us the truth that till eternity we will find difficult to believe.

“Now that the military under President Muhammadu Buhari has been courageous enough to move closer to those Boko Haram dens and not only arrests but kills many of them with many surrendering, it is only advisable that former President Jonathan should just be on the bench and be watching because, whether Buhari agrees to probe his administration or not, all the atrocities that were perpetrated in his administration between 2010 and 2015, which are part of the reasons we are into recession and insecurity in Nigeria, will be opened up one day,” he said.