Ex-President Goodluck Jonathan has said he fired his service chiefs twice between 2010 and 2015 when he presided over the country.
Jonathan said this while responding to some allegations in the memoir of David Cameron, ex-British prime minister.
Cameron had accused the Nigerian leader of frustrating the efforts to release the schoolgirls Boko Haram abducted in Chibok, Borno state, 2014.
He 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”.
But Jonathan said this was far from the truth, adding that he replaced his service chiefs in order to get results.
“He 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,” he said in a statement.
“I 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.
“On 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.
“During 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.”
The ex-president said Cameron nursed animosity towards him because he refused to legalise homosexuality when he was in power.
