BREAKING: Buhari returns to Abuja from Saudi Arabia
The President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (ret. ), completed his eight-day official visit to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday evening by traveling from Riyadh to Abuja.
Due to ongoing hostilities between the military and elements of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, Buhari’s NAF 001 Boeing 737 jet took a longer flight path to bypass Sudanese territory and arrived at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport at 5:08 p.m.
He arrived in Abuja “after nearly seven hours for a four to five-hour Jeddah-Abuja flight due to the ongoing situation in Sudan that warrants the avoidance of country’s entire airspace by air traffic,” a statement by the President’s Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, read Wednesday evening.
The redirected airplane, according to Shehu, traveled from Jeddah in Saudi Arabia via Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, Cameroon, and finally Nigeria.
The Director-General of Department of State Services, Yusuf Bichi, the Chief of Staff, Professor Ibrahim Gambari, and the Deputy Inspector-General of Police, Danmallam Mohammed, welcomed the President at the airport upon his arrival.
While on an eight-day business trip to Makkah, Saudi Arabia, Buhari also did the Umrah (lesser Hajj) and met with Mahamat Deby-Itno, his counterpart from the Republic of Chad, where he denounced the conflict in Sudan and called for a cease-fire.
Additionally, he went to Madinah’s International Fair and Museum of the Prophet’s Biography. There, he advocated for a fair understanding of Islam that corrects misconceptions about the 2,500-year-old faith.
