Skip to main content

President Buhari To Attend Nuclear Security Summit In Washington End of March

President Muhammadu Buhari is to attend the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington DC in three weeks’ time.  

A preliminary list of delegates shows that he will be accompanied to the three-day event, to be hosted by President Barak Obama between March 30 and April 1, by three governors and six Ministers.

Also on the preliminary list prepared by the presidency are 11 principal officers and a 23-member Advance team that includes a medical doctor, Protocol officers, State House media, bodyguards and a cook.  

The final list is expected to be higher when technical experts from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well as other Ministries, Departments and aides of relevant political office holders are added. 

An average presidential trip costs Nigerian taxpayers between half a million and $1.2million in travelling expenses alone. The last visit by President Buhari, to Saudi Arabia and Qatar, gulped over $3m at a time when the exchange rate was nearly N400 to $1.00.

President Buhari had also been scheduled to pay a state visit to China this month, but that has been postponed until further notice.

The 2016 Nuclear Security Summit will be the fourth to be hosted by President Obama, the first of them in 2010.  They are aimed at addressing the threat of nuclear terrorism to global security through international cooperation to secure vulnerable nuclear materials, break up black markets, and detect and intercept illicitly trafficked materials.