Emmanuel Macron landed at Murtala Muhammed International Airport on the evening of 3 July 2018, accompanied by his wife Brigitte and a 200-strong French business and cultural delegation. The most discussed event of the visit was his stop at the New Afrika Shrine in Ikeja on the evening of 3 July, where he was hosted by Yeni Kuti and Femi Kuti — a deliberate evocation of his own previous visit to the original Afrika Shrine in 2002, when he was a 24-year-old intern at the French Embassy in Lagos. Macron addressed an audience of Nigerian artists and musicians and announced French Government funding for a Pidgin English RFI Afrique broadcasting service and for the rebuilding of the New Afrika Shrine itself.
The formal bilateral programme followed on 4 July at the Presidential Villa with Muhammadu Buhari. The Macron–Buhari communiqué committed France to the Multinational Joint Task Force against Boko Haram in the Lake Chad Basin, to a €475 million investment by the Agence Française de Développement in Nigerian solar power, and to an enhanced Africa-French visa programme. Macron also formally opened the new building of the Alliance Française in Ikoyi. The Afrika Shrine stop, photographed extensively, became the dominant image of the visit and was widely treated as one of the most unconventional diplomatic gestures by any visiting Western head of state to Nigeria.