Nigeria’s former president Goodluck Jonathan has denied allegations that he rejected a British offer to rescue almost 300 schoolgirls kidnapped from their school in Chibok in 2014.
A report published in British newspaper the Observer over the weekend claimed that Jonathan, who was defeated by Muhammadu Buhari in Nigeria’s 2015 election, insisted that the solution to the kidnapping must come from Nigeria and rebuffed several offers of U.K. and international assistance.
The Nigerian militant group Boko Haram kidnapped 276 girls from their school dormitories in Chibok, a town in the northeastern Nigerian state of Borno, in April 2014. Fifty-seven of the girls managed to flee in the immediate aftermath, but no others escaped captivity until May 2016, when civilian vigilantes rescued Amina Ali Nkeki.
Negotiations between the Buhari government and Boko Haram paid off in October 2016, when the militants released 21 of the girls. The Nigerian military claims to have rescued two more of the girls, but 195 remain missing.
In a statement made by his media aide Ikechukwu Eze on Sunday, Jonathan dismissed the report as false. “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,” said the statement, reported in Nigeria’s Daily Trust newspaper.
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