The journey was to allow Buhari join other members of the ruling All Progressives Congress for the party’s ward congress taking place across the country on Saturday.
Buhari embarked on the trip a few hours after his return from the United States of America where he met with President Donald Trump.
The President who left Washington DC on Tuesday arrived in Abuja on Thursday evening after having a stopover in London, United Kingdom.
The Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, had earlier in the day attributed the “technical stopover” to the fact that the big aircraft in the Presidential Air Fleet is currently under repairs.
The presidential aide explained that the President is currently using a smaller aircraft that has a limit on the distance it can cover, hence the decision to have a stopover in the British capital.
He explained further that the stopover was meant to refuel and carry out some checks on the aircraft before proceeding on the journey.
He said there was nothing unusual about the issue, adding that the President was already on his way back to the country.
The presidential spokesman said, “The big jet is under repairs. It has been taken for major repairs. So the President is using a small place and there is a limit to the distance the small place 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.”
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