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 Barack 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 $1.2 million 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

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