In what looks like a response to Premium Times story which showed that the president is yet to arrive the country after a two day visit to Donald Trump, president of the United States of America, a presidential spokesperson on Thursday provided reasons why President Muhamamdu Buhari was still in London when he was supposed to have returned to Nigeria.
Garba Shehu said the president had to stop over in London on his way back from the United States for technical reasons.
Mr Shehu said the president’s main aircraft is under repairs and he had to use a smaller jet.
“The big jet is under repair. It has been taken for major repairs. So the president is using a small plane and there is a limit to the distance the small plane can cover,” he said in response to inquiries by State House correspondents.
Mr Shehu also said the “technical stopover I talked about is that the journey from U.S. to Abuja is broken into two.
“Technical stopover is that the plane stops at a point, refuel, do some checks and then proceed on the journey,” he said.
Mr Shehu said such stopover is “very normal” adding “there is nothing unusual about it.”
He added that Mr Buhari is already on his way back to Abuja.
“It is a routine thing. The plane can do Abuja-Washington, that’s about 12 hours and the maximum the plane can fly is 12 hours, 40 minutes. But you don’t need to push it to the edge,” he said.
Mr Buhari was in the U.S. on an official visit. He met with President Donald Trump and both leaders addressed a joint press conference.
