Abati said Jonathan's government failed to make the rescue of the girls public due to security reasons.
Former President Goodluck Jonathan's former spokesperson, Reuben Abati, has claimed that the former administration rescued many of the Chibok schoolgirls that were abducted by Boko Haram terrorists but failed to publicise it due to security reasons.
Boko Haram terrorists had abducted 276 schoolgirls from Government Secondary School in the town of Chibok, Borno State, on April 14, 2014, a year before Jonathan lost the presidential election to Muhammadu Buhari who has negotiated the release of 103 of the abducted girls from the group.
Jonathan's administration has long been publicly vilified for failing to secure the release of the girls, but Abati, who was the presidential spokesperson at the time, has sensationally claimed that many girls were actually rescued.
He made the revelation while interviewing President Buhari's Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, on ARISE TV.
When Adesina noted that Jonathan's government failed to secure the release of any girls, Abati said the previous government actually secured the release of many girls.
He said the girls met the then-president and but their identities were not disclosed to the public based on the advise of then-National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki.
He said, "We rescued many of the girls but the advice from the National Security Adviser at the time (Sambo Dasuki) was that we should not publicise it because of the identity of those girls. I witnessed this on many occasions. Those girls were brought to the president. He met with them.
"In fact, some of them were sent to school in the United States and United Kingdom. There were strict instructions not to publicise it because government thought that the identity of those girls should not be exposed. But l saw you guys making a song and a dance out of the ones you rescued, I then thought maybe we should have done the same thing in our time.
"If you check the records, the SSS, the intelligence agency, if you ask them, they will have the records."
It's unclear which girls Abati was referring to but it might be the 57 of the original 276 girls that individually escaped from the terrorists in the early days of the abduction. They are possibly the girls he's referring to as some non-governmental organisations helped some of those girls to continue their education in the United States of America.
According to public record, President Buhari's administration has secured the release of 103 of the girls in a prisoner swap with Boko Haram, and a further four were found by the military, leaving 112 still in captivity.
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The Bring Back Our Girls movement, an advocacy group that has spearheaded the campaign to pressure the government to secure the release of all the girls, has never acknowledged the retrieval of any girls by the Jonathan government as Abati claimed.