Garba Shehu: Buhari using a small plane… there’s a limit to the distance it can cover

Garba Shehu, spokesman of President Muhammadu Buhari, says there is a limit to the travel distance of the small plane his principal is currently using.

Shehu said this while clarifying his earlier comment that the president had a “technical stopover” in London.

He said the “big” presidential jet is undergoing repairs and the one in use has limited capacity.

“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 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.

“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. This is very normal. There is nothing unusual about it. In any case, they are already on their way back home.”

The president was expected in Nigeria on Wednesday after rounding off his US trip.

Buhari’s aircraft, left Joint Base Andrews military airfield in Washington on Tuesday morning.

Femi Adesina, special adviser to the president on media and publicity, had earlier announced that Buhari would arrive in Nigeria this evening.