Tinubu heads to London for first Nigerian state visit in four decades

Nigerian President Bola Tinubu lands in London Tuesday for a state visit hosted by Britain’s King Charles III, the first between Africa’s most populous nation and its former colonial power in nearly four decades.

Tinubu has visited the United Kingdom several times in his tenure as Nigeria’s president and the two countries remain major partners in trade, aid and defence. London is also home to a massive Nigerian diaspora.

Likely on the agenda are issues ranging from major Nigerian port renovations backed by Britain as well as trade, which reached £8.1 billion ($11 billion) in the year to September 2025, an 11.4 percent year-on-year increase.

Tinubu and his wife, Oluremi, will be greeted Wednesday by Prince William and his wife Catherine, Princess of Wales.

Charles will later receive Tinubu for an audience at Windsor Castle before hosting a state banquet that evening.

On Thursday, Tinubu is expected to meet British Prime Minister Keir Starmer as well as members of the Nigerian community abroad, according to the official schedule. King Charles hosted a reception last week for members of the Nigerian diaspora at St James’s Palace.

– Economic, defence ties –

The state visit provides Britain and Nigeria, which already have a strong diplomatic relationship, a chance to discuss security and trade, as well as governance issues ahead of next year’s presidential election, said Samuel Orovwuje, a Nigerian public affairs analyst and member of the African Development Studies Centre.

“We have a good trading relationship with the UK, but if you look at the balance of trade, it has always been in the favour of the UK,” Orovwuje told AFP.

London and Abuja concluded a strategic partnership in November 2024 to strengthen economic, immigration and security cooperation.

Many banks from Africa’s fourth-largest economy operate subsidiaries in the United Kingdom and the two nations signed an economic cooperation agreement in early 2024, under Britain’s previous Conservative government.

Meanwhile, loans for a major $700 million rehabilitation project at the Apapa and Tin Can Island ports, near the economic capital Lagos, have been guaranteed in part by export credit agency UK Export Finance.

Earlier this year, the Nigerian Ministry of Defence said the two countries intended to strengthen their defence cooperation following a massacre of more than 160 people in central Kwara attributed to jihadists.

The west African nation has been roiled by a jihadist insurgency since 2009, which the United States, a key British ally, has claimed amounts to a “genocide” of Christians — sparking a diplomatic crisis between Washington and Abuja, which denies the allegations.

Wednesday’s state visit is likely to be much more low-key.

– Potential wrinkles –

Potential sticking points remain however.

First Lady Oluremi Tinubu, a Christian pastor, is set to preach at services at Lambeth Palace and to meet representatives of the Church of England.

Tinubu is not an Anglican, but the meeting comes as a rift has emerged between England’s official Church and conservative Anglicans over the choice of a woman to serve as the Archbishop of Canterbury.

In response to Sarah Mullally’s ascension as the spiritual leader of Anglicans worldwide, a conservative group of Anglicans, mainly Africans, met in Abuja this month under the auspices of the Global Anglican Future Conference, which calls itself a movement of “authentic” Anglicans. They elected Laurent Mbanda, the archbishop of Rwanda, as their chairman.

And missing from the official schedule is the traditional meeting between the visiting head of state and the British opposition.

Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch, who is of Nigerian descent, has repeatedly criticised the country she was raised in in public over corruption and violence.

Meanwhile, a Nigerian court has ordered the British government to pay £420 million to the families of miners killed in 1949 by the colonial authorities.

And as museums around the world have slowly moved to restitute looted or dubiously acquired artefacts back to their African nations of origin, the British Museum has been a notable holdout.

The trip will be the first formal state visit by a Nigerian president to Britain in 37 years, although Tinubu was received by Charles in September 2024.

Before the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, in 2022, Charles visited Nigeria four times as Prince of Wales.

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