Why Buhari stopped over in London – Presidency

President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria

President Muhammadu Buhari’s spokesman has provided reasons why he stopped over in London following a working visit to the White House.

Buhari was due to have returned to Nigeria two days ago but due to some technical reasons he has not.

Garba Shehu said the president had to stop over in London on his way back from the United States for technical reasons.

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 on Thursday.

Mr Shehu also said the “technical stopover I talked about is that the journey from US to Abuja is broken into two.

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“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.