Buhari makes stopover in London to refuel, repair jet, says Presidency

PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari made a stopover in the United Kingdom after his visit to the President of the United States of America, USA, at the instance of his technical crew who decided to break the long US trip to refuel and do routine checks on the jet being used. Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari ‎‎Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity Malam Garba Shehu, in a text message to newsmen thursday afternoon, explained that Buhari’s technical crew decided to break the long US trip to refuel and do routine checks. ‎Shehu said, “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. 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,” the spokesman said. Recall that President Buhari had in 2017 spent several months in the UK attending to an undisclosed ailment. He had on arrival after the medical sojourn disclosed that he had never been that sick all his life. ‎Meanwhile, the Presidency has come hard on the Nigerian media berating the press for alleged misrepresentation of the issues during the encounter between President Muhammadu Buhari and the US President, Donald Trump. President Trump on Monday, read what could be described as a riot act to the Nigerian government, saying the continued killing of Christians in the country was unacceptable to the American government. Trump who received President Buhari at the White House, Washington DC, also condemned the spate of other killings occassioned by terrorists in Nigeria as a ‘terrible problem.’ The Christian Association of Nigerian, CAN, had called for the immediate resignation of President Buhari over his inability to tackle the ceaseless herdsmen killings and security challenges confronting the country. The association had also appealed to the international community to intervene in the crisis to save the country from relapsing into a religious crisis stressing that the attack on the Church in Benue was a jihad that should be stopped. Pope Francis had earlier on Sunday decried the attack on a church in Nigeria. The Pope was reacting to the killing of two Catholic priests and 17 other worshippers in Benue State by Fulani herdsmen last week Tuesday. Pope Francis had earlier on Sunday decried the attack on a church in Nigeria. The Pope was reacting to the killing of two Catholic priests and 17 other worshippers in Benue State by Fulani herdsmen last week Tuesday. ‎The pontiff spoke concerning the killings in Nigeria during his remarks to the public in St. Peter’s Square. ‎But, Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu yesterday accused the press for leaving out Muslims in their reportage of the one-on-one encounter between the two leaders. His words, ” it is important to explain the context of the remarks by President Trump where he was quoted as saying the U.S is concerned about the murder or killing, as he put it, of Christians. “At the press conference, President Trump towards the end of his remarks, at the briefing, mentioned the protection of ‘‘innocent civilians of all faiths, including Muslims and Christians’’, which reporters left out. “In his remarks, the US President neither chided nor talked down on President Buhari. Saying that “we will do something about that,” is a clear expression of willingness to support Nigeria to bring to an end the unwanted killings. This is contrary to the press reporting which jumped on the issue, conveying a wrong impression that President Trump was only concerned about the lives of Christians. He mentioned Muslim lives as well,” he said. The spokesman equally described as wrong, the hasty condemnation of the U.S. President by some Muslim groups in the country without the benefit of a full view and understanding of what was said and the context in which it was said. “It is also important that records be set straight to counter the mischief of opponents, some of whom have started rendering false narratives of a meeting to which they were neither invited nor in any way aware of its details,” he added.
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