Is Tinubu's Aide Claim That GEJ Administration Denied the Chibok Girls’ Abduction True? Fact Emerges
Legit.ng journalist Ridwan Adeola Yusuf has over 5 years of experience in fact-checking.
FCT, Abuja - On Tuesday night, November 18, 2025, Dada Olusegun, special assistant on social media to President Bola Tinubu, claimed that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)–Goodluck Jonathan administration insisted that the abduction of the Chibok girls "was a lie".
Legit.ng recalls that on April 14, 2014, during the administration of Jonathan, 276 schoolgirls were kidnapped by the Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram from Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok town, Borno state, northeast geopolitical zone.
Source: Twitter
The criminal act shocked the world and sparked a global campaign to #BringBackOurGirls, which included former US first lady Michelle Obama.
More than 180 Chibok schoolgirls have either escaped or been freed. Similar attacks keep happening in Nigeria.
In the wee hours of Monday, November 17, 2025, armed gangs known locally as bandits scaled the perimeter fence of the Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School in Maga town, Kebbi state in the northwest, and abducted 25 students. During the attack in Maga, the assailants killed the school’s vice principal, Hassan Makuku, and shot the principal.
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Legit.ng reports that armed groups have targeted school children in Nigeria's northern region since 2014, when Boko Haram carried out an infamous attack on the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok. The schoolgirls' abduction marked the beginning of a new era of fear, and several of the girls remain in captivity.
Since the Chibok abduction, at least 1,500 students have been kidnapped, as armed groups increasingly find in abductions a lucrative way to fund other crimes and control villages in the nation’s mineral-rich but poorly policed region, ABC News noted.
In March 2024, more than 130 schoolchildren were rescued after spending more than two weeks in captivity in Kaduna state.
Nonetheless, raids on schools have subsided in recent years as state governments implemented security measures in hotspots, including closing schools for an extended period of time.
As Nigerians urged on President Tinubu to ensure the safe return of the kidnapped Kebbi schoolgirls, a popular public commentator, Kayode Ogundamisi, joined the call.
Sharing a past picture of then-opposition member Tinubu holding a placard which read: 'Bring Back Our Girls Sharply', Ogundamisi charged the incumbent Nigerian leader to, unfailingly, rescue the young Kebbi abductees.
But criticising Ogundamisi, President Tinubu's aide, Olusegun, stated that the Jonathan administration denied or refused to acknowledge that the Chibok girls' abduction was real.
He wrote on his verified X (formerly Twitter) handle:
"This is very disingenuous egbon Kayode. The reason for this picture you're posting was that the PDP-GEJ (referring to Jonathan) administration insisted that the abduction of the Chibok girls was a lie. This administration immediately swung into action and the military are on the trail of these terrorists. Easy with the false equivalence to sound objective."
Tinubu’s aide makes misleading Chibok claim
Is Olusegun's claim on Jonathan correct? Legit.ng fact-checks it.
Findings by this online news platform showed that it is not true that the Jonathan administration officially insisted the abduction of the Chibok girls was "a lie". However, there were initial conflicting signals, scepticism among some officials at the federal level, and criticisms from the opposition at the time, the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Nigeria's vice president, Kashim Shettima, who was the governor of Borno at the time of the Chibok girls' abduction in 2014, waited for almost three weeks expecting then-president Jonathan to reach out to him.
The governor, an APC chieftain, had said that Jonathan took 19 days to telephone him to ask about the abduction. The Bayelsa-born politician faced public criticism for his government's alleged slow response.
Source: Getty Images
Speaking to Premium Times on Saturday, April 2, 2016, Shettima disclosed that he did not call ex-President Jonathan to brief him after Boko Haram abducted over 200 school girls from Chibok, because he knew that security agencies must have briefed the latter of the development the day it happened.
In the same vein, The New York Times editorial of May 6, 2014, titled “Nigeria’s Stolen Girls” stated that Jonathan was 'shockingly slow and inept' in addressing the crime of the Chibok girls' abduction. The publication added that “the reaction of Jonathan’s wife, Patience, was stunningly callous” and most damagingly: “Jonathan initially played down (Boko Haram’s) threat…it wasn’t until…more than two weeks after the kidnappings that he called a meeting of government officials.
Verdict: Jonathan didn’t deny abduction
Then-President Jonathan was widely criticised for initially downplaying the Boko Haram threat. Critics, including the opposition and some international observers, accused his administration of being slow to acknowledge the severity of the insurgency, which they argued emboldened the outlaws.
He was lambasted for allegedly not doing enough to locate and rescue the girls. However, there was no documented evidence of the Jonathan administration claiming or maintaining that the reports of the Chibok girls being abducted were false.
Source: Legit.ng
