The Presidency on Thursday explained why President Muhammadu Buhari was yet to arrive Nigeria after meeting with his United States counterpart, Donald Trump on Monday.
Recall that the president left the shores of the country on Saturday to honour the invitation of President Donald Trump.
The meeting was held on Monday and the president was expected back in the country on Tuesday.
However, the president is yet to return back to the country since then.
Explaining why the president stayed longer than expected, presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu said the president had to stop over in London on his way back from the United States for technical reasons.
The spokesman also explained that 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.
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.
Shehu said such stopover is “very normal” adding “there is nothing unusual about it.”
He added that 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.