A former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, David Cameron, has accused former President Goodluck Jonathan of preventing British troops from rescuing the 276 girls abducted from a secondary school in Chibok, Borno State by Boko Haram terrorists in April 2014.
Cameron, in his recently released book titled ‘For the Record’, said the British troops spotted the location of the schoolgirls and offered to rescue them but their offer was turned down by Jonathan.
“Iraq wasn’t the only place we would need our military to counter this extremist menace. Boko Haram in Nigeria was linked to al-Qaeda, and believed Western education and lifestyles were a sin (the meaning behind its name). It too wanted to institute a caliphate, and like ISIS it would use whatever barbaric means it thought necessary.”
“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,” Cameron wrote in his book.
Jonathan has, however, refuted the statement in a Facebook post on Saturday. Jonathan said there was no truth in what the former British Prime Minister said, adding that the only reason Cameron was after him was because he disapproved of same sex marriage, which he (Cameron) and his other western allies had wanted him to embrace. Mr Jonathan said he turned down the proposal in good conscience.
