Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have arrived in Nigeria for their 72-hour tour to promote the Invictus Games.
They arrived on Friday after boarding the British Airways overnight flight to Abuja which was slightly delayed after the scheduled pilot went sick, and a replacement had to be quickly arranged.
Some Nigerian officials met them on arrival, just before 5 am, at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja. Afterward, they were taken out of a side door onto the jetty, and into a waiting blacked-out minibus.
“They will be tired after their journey, so they will rest and then the first engagement is at midday at the Defence Headquarters,” defence spokesperson Brigadier General Tukur Gusau told the Daily Mail.
“After that, they will travel to Kaduna to meet wounded soldiers at a military hospital there before returning to Abuja for other engagements.”
The visit primarily to promote the Invictus Games comes after Harry met the Nigerian team and the Chief of Defence Staff General Christopher Musa at last year’s competition in Dusseldorf, Germany.
It was there that he told the audience Meghan was ‘rooting for Team Nigeria’, after discovering she had heritage from the West African nation.
Harry and Meghan are visiting Nigeria at the invitation of General Musa.
The couple is due to visit a school before the duke meets injured service members at a military hospital.
They will also attend a training session for the charity organisation Nigeria: Unconquered which collaborates with the Invictus Games, as well as a reception where military families will be honoured.
On Saturday, the couple will attend a training session for the organisation, Nigeria: Unconquered, and a reception hosted by the Chief of Defence Staff in honour of military families.
In the afternoon, Meghan will co-host an event of Women in Leadership with Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director General of the World Trade Organization.
On Sunday, the couple will attend a basketball clinic with Giants of Africa, a cultural reception, and a polo fundraiser for Nigeria: Unconquered.
In 2022, the Duchess of Sussex revealed that she had discovered via a genealogy test that she was 43% Nigerian.
Talking about it in her Archetypes podcast, she told comedian Ziwe, “I’m going to start to dig deeper into all this because anybody that I’ve told, especially Nigerian women, are like ‘What!’ ”
“This is huge for our community. No, honestly, you do look like a Nigerian, you look like my Aunt Uzo. So this is great,” Ziwe, 30, said.