SAN FRANCISCO, March 05, (THEWILL) – Reports coming out from the United Kingdom Saturday revealed that the administration of Goodluck Jonathan reportedly rejected the offer of British armed forces to help in rescuing the abducted Chibok girls.
According to the Observer, Britain was ready to rescue the Chibok girls from the Boko Haram insurgent group after their abduction in April 2014 as Britain’s royal air force was said to have conducted air reconnaissance over Northern Nigeria for several months in a mission named Operation Turus.
It revealed that the Jonathan government rebuffed all offers to rescue the over 300 kidnapped schoolgirls but welcomed an aid package and assistance from the US, the UK and France in looking for the girls.
Notes from meetings between UK and Nigerian officials, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, also revealed that the administration shunned international offers to rescue the girls as it viewed any action to be taken against kidnapping as a “national issue”.
“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.
According to the unnamed source, the girls were tracked by aircraft while they were being divided into smaller groups in the months after their kidnap.
“Nigeria’s intelligence and military services must solve the ultimate problem,” said Jonathan in a meeting with the UK’s then Africa minister, Mark Simmonds, on 15 May 2014.
A document summarising a meeting in Abuja in September 2014 between Nigeria’s national security adviser and James Duddridge MP, former under-secretary of state at the Foreign Office, shows Operation Turus had advanced to the point where rescue options were being discussed.
Minutes from a meeting the following month between Major-General James Chiswell and Jonathan hinted at the frustration felt by those trying to prompt some action from Nigeria.
“[President] Jonathan was still focused on ‘platforms’. General Chiswell said again we could offer advice on what equipment might make sense and how weapon systems might be best deployed,” the October 2014 document stated.
