Pakistani President, Mamnoon Hussain has cancelled his scheduled visit to Nigeria following the deadly Nyanya motor park explosion that killed at over 75 people in Abuja this week.
Hussain was scheduled to begin a three-day visit to Abuja on Monday, but the trip was cancelled due to what diplomatic sources described as serious security concerns.
Pakistani Deputy High Commissioner to Nigeria, Ahmed Sirohey, confirmed the trip has been suspended but denied the decision was connected to security fears in Nigeria.
Sirohey said the visit was cancelled to allow President Hussain address “pressing domestic commitments,” though he did not provide details of those commitments or when the Pakistani government realized their urgency to suspend a long-planned trip.
“Due to pressing concerns in Pakistan, the visit of the president to Nigeria has been postponed; we shall use our diplomatic channel to agree on a new date,’’ Sirohey said.
Dauda Danladi, Nigeria’s High Commissioner to Pakistan, who also confirmed the postponement, said the Nigerian government has already been briefed by the Pakistani authorities.
Hussain was initially billed to arrive Nigeria with 70 government officials and textile tycoons on the invitation of President Goodluck Jonathan.
Sirohey, said the trip, the first in 32 years, would have enabled both countries to explore cooperation in petroleum resources, energy and domestic gas.
“We have huge pipe-to-gas across the country and there are about eight million customers served by our Natural Gas Company and they are provided gas in their houses,” he had told journalists ahead of the planned Monday visit.
“Bills are sent to customers at the end of the month and the bill for a house of six people is not more than N300 per month. If it is a big house like you have in Maitama district in Abuja it is not more than N1500.”
However, our correspondent gathered from sources close to the Pakistani officials in Abuja said that the decision was taken in direct response to Nigeria’s increasing security troubles that have seen more than 100 people killed since Monday, and 129 school girls abducted by suspected Boko Haram militants.
Diplomatic sources said that the cancellation of the Pakistani president’s trip is another blow to Nigeria’s struggling image abroad, which has been further dented by this week’s handling of the abduction of schoolgirls in the north-eastern state of Borno.
Back home, Pakistan itself faces some of the world’s most horrific terrorist insurgency with a decade-old struggle against the Taliban.
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