President Muhammadu Buhari has departed Abuja for Daura, his hometown in Katsina state, for the ward congress of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
The ruling party had fixed May 5 for the ward congress, fixing the local government area (LGA) and state congresses for May 12 and May 19 respectively.
Buhari arrived the country on Thursday night after his visit to Washington DC upon the invitation of President Donald Trump and a “technical stopover” in London.
The absence of the president in the country 48 hours after leaving the US had raised concerns but on Thursday afternoon, Garba Shehu, Buhari’s spokesman, said the president had to break the long trip from Washington in order to refuel and do routine checks.
Shehu had explained that his arrival in Nigeria was delayed because the president did not fly in the larger presidential presidential jet, Eagle One, because it had gone for repairs.
He said the president used a smaller aircraft which he said could only cover 12 hours and 40 minutes.
“The big jet is under repairs. 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 had said.
“So the technical stopover I talked about is that the journey from US 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.
“This is very normal. There is nothing unusual about it. In any case, they are already on their way back home.
“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, 40minutes. But you don’t need to push it to the edge.”
