The Prince and Princess of Wales were received at Murtala Muhammed International Airport on 15 March 1990 by Vice-Admiral Augustus Aikhomu, Chief of General Staff, and by the British High Commissioner Sir Brian Barder. The Royal Yacht Britannia, on its last West African tour before its 1997 decommissioning, was berthed at Apapa.
President Ibrahim Babangida hosted the couple to a state banquet at State House, Marina, and the formal bilateral programme covered education, the Commonwealth scholarships scheme, and Nigeria's role in West African peacekeeping (ECOMOG had been deployed to Liberia six months earlier). Diana, dressed in green for the State House dinner, dominated the local press; she made unscheduled visits to Lagos University Teaching Hospital and to a Save the Children-supported primary school in Iponri, where she was photographed holding infants — images that would later be cited as the prototype of her 'people's princess' public role. The visit was the only joint overseas tour the couple made to West Africa, and the last to Nigeria before their separation in 1992.