David Cameron, former British
prime minister, has alleged that ex-President Goodluck Jonathan did not give
enough support to Britain during the abduction of 274 schoolgirls in Chibok,
Borno state.
The abduction, which took place
on April 14 2014, had sparked a global outrage following which the
international community offered to assist Nigeria.
In For The Record, his memoir,
Cameron, who was in office at the time of the incident, said British troops
traced the location of some of the victims and offered to help but Jonathan
refused.
“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,”Cameron wrote.
“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.
Cameron said he expected Jonathan
to handle the Chibok issue better
“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.”
Our correspondent sent messages to
Ikechukwu Eze, spokesman of Jonathan, seeking his reaction to Cameron’s claim
but he had not responded as of the time this report was filed.
Cameron also said the Nigerian
army was unable to participate in operations the US and UK forces organised for
the rescue of Chibok schoolgirls because of “politically appointed generals”.
The ex-British prime minister
wrote on how the Archbishop of Canterbury was contacted to assist during the
intervention in Nigeria.
“We had to play the long game
focusing on a much bigger training effort for the Nigerian military and
intelligence forces and trying to promote more energetic leaders from the
younger generation. The Archbishop of Canterbury, as an expert on Nigeria,
could be particularly useful on this and I invited him to join our NSC
discussion,” he wrote.
“Some of the girls have managed
to escape over the following four years, and others have been released, but
over a hundred are still missing. Once again. the combination of lslamist
extremism and bad governance proved fatal.
“How did I feel about all this at
the end of 2014? The answer is, depressed. ISIS now occupied an area larger
than Britain. A similar brand of terrorism was being wrought by Boko Harem in
west Africa), another ISIS affiliate in north Africa, and by al-Shabab (‘the
youth) in east Africa, while related groups were springing up in the
Philippines, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and the Caucasus. There seemed to be no
stopping an evil ideology that seduced minds from the badlands of Syt’tato
bedrooms in Birmingham. When I spoke about the challenge publicly I tried to
remain measured and resolute. But privately did asked myself, would we ever be
able to defeat this thing?
A total of 112 Chibok schoolgirls
have remained unaccounted for. The government of President Muhammadu Buhari
secured the release of more than 100 while 57 managed to escape.
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