President Buhari has not traveled out of the country for treatment – Presidency

The Nigerian presidency faults an audio message which claimed that President Muhammadu Buhari and his chief of staff, Abba Kyari, have been flown out of the country for medical attention – The presidency describes the audio message about Buhari’s whereabouts as a concocted claim which should be totally disregarded – Similarly, Garba Shehu, calls on Nigerians to ignore the audio message regarding the whereabouts of President Buhari and his chief of staff. The presidency has described as false an audio message circulating on social media which claimed that President Muhammadu Buhari and his chief of staff, Abba Kyari have been flown out of the country for medical attention amid the coronavirus pandemic in Nigeria.

The presidency faults audio message which claimed that President Muhammadu Buhari and his chief of staff, Abba Kyari have been flown out of the country. The unverified audio message which was recorded in a female’s voice had alleged that President Buhari and Abba Kyari were flown out by the Nigerian Air Force. Not long after the message surfaced, the tag #WhereIsBuhari began to trend on twitter by some persons who seemed to have believed the rumour.

The federal government had granted Air France and KLM one-week permission to evacuate European citizens from Nigeria. The airlines are also evacuating European citizens from the West Coast because of the projection that COVID-19 spread in Africa might spike in the coming days. The federal government had approved for Air France to operate essential flights from Thursday, March 26 to Thursday, April 2. The General Manager, Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Mrs Victoria Shinaba, confirmed that the federal government approved the flight to land, adding that precautions were taken to limit contacts as the pilot and crew were not allowed to disembark and the nationals were escorted to the plane. The federal government had last week announced that from Monday, all the nation’s airports would be shut to incoming international flights. The Nigerian government had also announced the closure of all land borders for four weeks as part of measures to curb the spread of coronavirus in the country.