South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has concluded a state visit to Nigeria, one that he dubbed “really excellent and successful”, saying that both countries had “built a solid foundation” to together overcome future challenges.
“We have had extensive discussions with President [Muhammadu] Buhari on a one-to-one basis and reached a lot of areas of understanding and mutual agreements,” President Ramaphosa said at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja before boarding a flight home yesterday.
Mr Ramaphosa applauded Nigerian ministers who welcomed their South African counterparts during his visit to Nigeria, saying that they had signed and put forward many valuable agreements and memoranda of understanding.
“Some of the agreements are going to be finalised once we get home and get a cabinet minute,” he continued. “Altogether, we had some 32 agreements with Nigeria and implementation is going to be monitored by President Buhari and myself.”
Meanwhile, the Nigerian authority reported that three new cases of the new Omicron variant and 105 other regular COVID-19 cases were detected in the country during South Africa’s visit.
“We are particularly pleased that Nigeria demonstrated its commitment in terms of receiving us even in the wake of Omicron and they were quite determined that this visit should take place even though on a scaled-down basis but they did not want to dilute the main input of the visit,” Mr Ramaphosa said.
President Buhari, on the other hand, has arrived in Dubai to attend the EXPO 2020, as reported by Presidential spokesman Mr Femi Adesina.
