{"id":16392,"date":"2019-10-05T20:01:59","date_gmt":"2019-10-05T20:01:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.com\/nigeria\/?p=16392"},"modified":"2019-10-05T20:04:30","modified_gmt":"2019-10-05T20:04:30","slug":"jonathan-reacts-to-allegation-of-stopping-britain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/all-news\/jonathan-reacts-to-allegation-of-stopping-britain","title":{"rendered":"Jonathan reacts to allegation of stopping Britain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former President, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Goodluck_Jonathan\">Goodluck Jonathan<\/a> on Saturday rubbished claims by ex-British Prime Minister, David Cameron that he stopped Britain from rescuing the abducted Chibok schoolgirls.<\/p>\n<p>Cameron had disclosed that the then government of Jonathan did not give enough support to Britain after the abduction of 274 schoolgirls from Chibok, Borno State in 2014 in order to enable their rescue.<\/p>\n<p>In his memoir, \u201cIn For The Record,\u201d the former British Prime Minister said his country\u2019s troops traced the location of some of the victims and offered to help but Jonathan refused.<\/p>\n<p>However, Jonathan in a swift response insisted that he wrote to the British government after the abduction, seeking for help but it was turned down.<\/p>\n<p>In a statement he personally signed, Jonathan wondered why Cameron failed to inform the world about when he asked for help.<\/p>\n<p>The statement reads: \u201cI read the comments by former British Prime Minister, David Cameron, in his new book, For the Record, in which he accused me and the Nigerian Government, which I headed, of corruption and rejecting the help of the British Government in rescuing the Chibok Girls, who were kidnapped on April 14, 2014.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is quite sad that Mr. Cameron would say this because nothing of such ever occurred. As President of Nigeria, I not only wrote letters to then Prime Minister David Cameron, I also wrote to the then US President, Barrack Obama, and the then French President, Fran\u00e7ois Hollande, as well as the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, appealing to them for help in rescuing the Chibok Girls.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow could I write to appeal for help and then reject the very thing I appealed for?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAlso, history contradicts Mr. Cameron. On March 8, 2012, when the same Boko Haram linked terrorists abducted a British expatriate named Chris McManus, along with an Italian hostage Franco Lamolinara, in Sokoto, I, as Nigerian President, personally authorised a rescue effort by members of the British military Special Boat Service supported by officers and men of the Nigerian Army, to free the abducted men.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo, having set a precedent like that, why would I reject British help in rescuing the Chibok Girls, if it was offered?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI also authorised the secret deployment of troops from the United Kingdom, the United States and Israel as a result of the Chibok incident, so how Mr. Cameron could say this with a straight face beats me.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMoreover, on March 8, 2017, the British Government of former Prime Minister, Theresa May, in a widely circulated press statement, debunked this allegation and said there was no truth in it after Mr. Cameron had made similar statements to the Observer of the UK.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn his book, Mr. Cameron failed to mention that I wrote him requesting his help on Chibok. Why did he suppress that information? I remind him that copies of that letter exist at the State Houses in Nigeria and London. He never called me on the phone to offer any help. On the contrary, I am the one that reached out to him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe accused me of appointing Generals based on political considerations. How could that be when I fired my service chiefs twice in five years, to show that I would not tolerate anything less than meaningful progress in the war on terror.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was completely blind to ethnic or political considerations in my appointments. In civil and military matters, I appointed people that I had never even met prior to appointing them, based on their professional pedigree. Though I was from the South, most of my service chiefs came from the North.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI do, however, know that Mr. Cameron has long nursed deep grudges against me for reasons that have been published in various media.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOn July 24, 2013, while celebrating the passage of the United Kingdom\u2019s Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act, 2013, Mr. Cameron said \u201cI want to export gay marriage around the world\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt that occasion, he boasted that he would send the team that successfully drafted and promoted the Bill, to nations, like Nigeria, saying inter alia:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve told the Bill team I\u2019m now going to reassign them because, of course, all over the world people would have been watching this piece of legislation\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs President of Nigeria at that time, I came under almost unbearable pressure from the Cameron administration to pass legislation supporting LGBTQ Same Sex marriage in Nigeria. My conscience could not stomach that, because as President of Nigeria, I swore on the Bible to advance Nigeria\u2019s interests, and not the interest of the United Kingdom or any foreign power.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs such, on Monday, January 13, 2014, I signed the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Bill into law after the Bill had been passed by an overwhelming bipartisan majority of Nigeria\u2019s parliament, in line with the wishes of the Nigerian people. This happened shortly after a study of 39 nations around the world by the U.S. Pew Research Center came up with a finding which indicated that 98 percent of Nigerians were opposed to the idea of Gay Marriage.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cImmediately after I took this patriotic action, my government came under almost unbearable pressure from Mr. Cameron, who reached me through envoys, and made subtle and not so subtle threats against me and my government.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn fact, meetings were held at the Obama White House and at the Portcullis House in Parliament UK, with the then Nigerian opposition to disparage me, after I had signed the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Bill into law.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOn the issue of corruption, it suffices to say that Mr. Cameron is not as competent as Transparency International, which is globally acknowledged as the adjudicator of who is corrupt and who is not.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDuring my administration, in 2014, Nigeria made her best ever improvement on the annual Transparency International Corruption Perception Index, moving from 144 the previous year, to 136, an 8 point improvement. As a nation, we have not made such improvements on the CPI before or after 2014.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn line with these facts, I would urge the public to take Mr. Cameron\u2019s accusations with a grain of salt. I will not be the first person to accuse him of lying on account of this book, and with the reactions in the Uk so far, I definitely will not be the last.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former President, Goodluck Jonathan on Saturday rubbished claims by ex-British Prime Minister, David Cameron that he stopped Britain from rescuing the abducted Chibok schoolgirls. Cameron had disclosed that the then government of Jonathan did not give enough support to Britain after the abduction of 274 schoolgirls from Chibok, Borno State in 2014 in order to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":10527,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,30],"tags":[957,958,42,235],"class_list":["post-16392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-community","tag-british-government","tag-chibok","tag-goodluck-jonathan","tag-president"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.1 (Yoast SEO v27.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Jonathan reacts to allegation of stopping Britain - Nigeria<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Former President, Goodluck Jonathan on Saturday rubbished claims by ex-British Prime Minister, David Cameron that he stopped Britain\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/all-news\/jonathan-reacts-to-allegation-of-stopping-britain\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Jonathan reacts to allegation of stopping Britain\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Former President, Goodluck Jonathan on Saturday rubbished claims by ex-British Prime Minister, David Cameron that he stopped Britain\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/all-news\/jonathan-reacts-to-allegation-of-stopping-britain\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Nigeria\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-10-05T20:01:59+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2019-10-05T20:04:30+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/2019\/05\/President-Goodluck-Jonathan.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1280\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"720\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"alico\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"alico\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/all-news\/jonathan-reacts-to-allegation-of-stopping-britain#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/all-news\/jonathan-reacts-to-allegation-of-stopping-britain\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"alico\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/#\/schema\/person\/50afd2ef4f0e900bd0a176404a8484a7\"},\"headline\":\"Jonathan reacts to allegation of stopping Britain\",\"datePublished\":\"2019-10-05T20:01:59+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2019-10-05T20:04:30+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/all-news\/jonathan-reacts-to-allegation-of-stopping-britain\"},\"wordCount\":1038,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/all-news\/jonathan-reacts-to-allegation-of-stopping-britain#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/2019\/05\/President-Goodluck-Jonathan.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"British government\",\"Chibok\",\"Goodluck Jonathan\",\"President\"],\"articleSection\":[\"all news\",\"Community\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/all-news\/jonathan-reacts-to-allegation-of-stopping-britain#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/all-news\/jonathan-reacts-to-allegation-of-stopping-britain\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/all-news\/jonathan-reacts-to-allegation-of-stopping-britain\",\"name\":\"Jonathan reacts to allegation of stopping Britain - 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