Ex-British high commissioner to Nigeria says West refused to rescue Chibok schoolgirls

FORMER British high commissioner to Nigeria Dr Andrew Pocock has revealed that the UK and US had video recordings of the whereabouts of the Chibok girls but decided not to mount a rescue operation to free them because the risks were too high.

 

On April 14 2014, Boko Haram abducted 276 pupils from Government Secondary School Chibok in Borno State and up until now has held them as hostages. Following their abduction, an international campaign to secure their release was started and surveillance planes were sent to Nigeria to find the locations where they were being held.

 

According to Dr Pocock surveillance carried out by the US and the UK spotted around 80 of the abducted schoolgirls but the governments of both countries did nothing about it as a rescue attempt was considered too high risk. He also revealed that videos showed that the girls were brutally raped regularly.

Although 57 of the girls managed to escape, the rest have remained missing and have not been heard from or seen since, apart from in May that year, when 130 of them appeared in a Boko Haram video wearing hijabs and reciting the Koran.

 

Furthermore, Dr Pocock added that Western governments felt powerless to help as any rescue attempt would have led to the Boko Haram terrorists using the girls as human shields. He said the girls were there for at least four weeks but authorities were powerless to intervene and the Nigerian government did not ask for help anyway.

Dr Pocock said: “A couple of months after the kidnapping, fly-bys and an American eye in the sky spotted a group of up to 80 girls in a particular spot in the Sambisa Forest, around a very large tree, called locally the Tree of Life, along with evidence of vehicular movement and a large encampment. A land-based attack would have been seen coming miles away and the girls killed, while an air-based rescue, such as flying in helicopters or Hercules, would have required large numbers and meant a significant risk to the rescuers and even more so to the girls.

“You might have rescued a few but many would have been killed. My personal fear was always about the girls not in that encampment as 80 were there but 250 were taken, so the bulk were not there and what would have happened to them? You were damned if you do and damned if you don’t."

He added that the information was passed to the Nigerian authorities but they made no request for help. Some of the girls who managed to escape said they were kept in women’s prisons where they were taught about Islam where Boko Haram fighters would visit and pick wives, with many of them being regularly brutally raped.