It is not true that the Jonathan administration rejected the offer of British armed forces to help in rescuing the abducted Chibok girls, the United Kingdom government has said.
On Sunday, The Observer, a UK newspaper, said Britain was ready to rescue the Chibok girls after they conducted air reconnaissance over northern Nigeria for several months in a mission named Operation Turus, but the Jonathan administration declined.
“The girls were located in the first few weeks of the RAF mission. We offered to rescue them, but the Nigerian government declined,” a source involved in Operation Turus was quoted as saying.
But the former president denied it, saying the story was “concocted” by those “who have been playing politics with the issue of the abducted girls.”
“We are 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,” former president Goodluck Jonathan said in a statement.
On Tuesday, the British high commission in Abuja said the report that Jonathan turned down its offer to rescue the girls “was false.”
According to THISDAY, Mathew Rycroft, the ambassador, said he was briefed on the matter and the allegations were not true.
“The British High Commissioner briefed me on that today (Monday) and said that the allegations are not true,” Rycroft said.
In a statement further released by the commission read: “UK worked with the US and France to provide a range of military and intelligence support to the Nigerian government in their search (for the Chibok girls), and in fact, a wider effort to address the longer term challenge of terrorism.
“But importantly, we won’t comment on specific additional details, which is a matter for the Nigerian government and the military.”