LONDON, Feb 8, 2026 (BSS/AFP) - Britain's monarch King Charles III will play host to Nigerian President Bola Tinubu when the African leader makes a state visit to Britain on March 18-19, Buckingham Palace said in a statement on Saturday.

President Tinubu and his wife, Olumeri Tinubu, will be received at Windsor Castle, west of London, by Charles and Queen Camilla, the palace said.

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

The West African nation has been grappling with a jihadist insurgency for several years in the northeast and heavily armed criminal gangs in the northwest and centre of the country.

On Friday, the Nigerian Ministry of Defence said the two countries intended to strengthen their defence cooperation following a week marked by the massacre of more than 160 people in central Kwara State which President Tinubu attributed to jihadists.

The two capitals had also signed an economic cooperation agreement in early 2024, under the previous British Conservative government.

A former British colony and member of the Commonwealth, Nigeria was the first African state visited by the British Foreign Secretary (then David Lammy), shortly after the Labour government came to power in July 2024.

Nigeria, the most populous country on the continent with a population of 230 million and one of Africa's largest economies, is also a major recipient of development aid from the UK, home to a large Nigerian diaspora.

Trade between the two countries reached o8.1 billion ($11 billion) in the year to September 2025, an 11.4 percent year-on-year increase, according to data from the UK Department for Business.

British exports to Nigeria rose 14.2 percent to o5.7 billion.

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

Charles visited Nigeria four times when he was Prince of Wales before the death of his mother Queen Elizabeth II in 2022.

On Friday, a Nigerian court ordered the British government to pay o420 million to the families of miners killed in 1949 by the colonial authorities, after they protested their working conditions and unpaid wages by occupying the mine where they were employed.